A FAST Method to Achieve Flexible Production Programming Systems

One of the main critical problems in manufacturing system domains is the production scheduling process, because an agile and reactive production planning and scheduling system is essential in manufacturing. The production scheduling process is a complex problem in which finding a suitable production scheduling can greatly increase the effectiveness of highly flexible production processes. Nevertheless, this high flexibility makes the production scheduling and acquisition of relevant data quite complicated. Therefore, there is a strong demand for a universal and flexible tool for production scheduling capable of increasing the utilization of resources and that supports a decision-making process for the selection of production orders. In this paper, a flexible and adaptive scheduling tool (FAST) to develop an adaptable, fault-tolerant, and scalable scheduling system for a manufacturing environment is presented. This approach is based on multiagent systems (MAS), which provide a natural way to solve problems in domains of this kind.