Significant states and decision making for real time workshop scheduling

To execute a production plan in the disturbed environment of a manufacturing workshop, real-time scheduling methods and tools are needed. The associated real-time decision making problems are described. Significant resource and operation states for decision making are identified. This induces the set of significant events which must be detected by means of the shop-floor real-time monitoring system. The relationships between states and events are described using Petri nets. The two main types of decisions for real-time scheduling are briefly discussed