A hybrid system for short-term scheduling in manufacturing: a case study

In this paper a system for dealing with short-term scheduling problems in manufacturing is presented. The system has a hybrid architecture since it integrates a module based on a numerical scheduling algorithm with a knowledge-based module. The system is designed to deal with the scheduling problems which, due to the complexity of the operational conditions involved cannot be solved in an acceptable way by a reliable numerical algorithm. The approach proposed is that of generating a starting solution to a simplified version of the real problem by means of a numerical algorithm, and then modifying such a solution by the knowledge-based module in order to satisfy the real conditions. A case study which illustrates such an approach is presented