Title: Cooperating scheduling systems

Authors: Jurgen Dorn

Addresses: Technical University Vienna, Favoritenstrasse 9-11, A-1040 Vienna, Austria

Abstract: An architecture and a procedure for communicating scheduling expert systems based on fuzzy set theory is proposed. Fuzzy sets are used to express and to exchange constraints and their potential relaxation with the cooperating scheduling system that can interpret these constraints. The procedure is intended to optimise global evaluation among the communicating systems. An example from the steel industry is taken to illustrate the approach. Here, a scheduling system of the steel making shop and that of the rolling mill tries to optimise global costs by optimising its own schedules under the observation of the other systems constraints.

Keywords: scheduling; cooperative production; fuzzy logic; tabu search; steel making.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2001.001430

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2001 Vol.3 No.6, pp.570-585

Published online: 03 Jul 2003 *

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