DISPATCHER: An Intelligent Approach to Factory Control

This paper describes DISPATCHER, an expert system for dispatching work-in-progress in an automated material handling system. DISPATCHER is installed and used in production at two manufacturing facilities, where it´s performance surpasses requirements and expectations. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques employed in building DISPATCHER, and the language chosen (OPS5), contributed to the system being developed quickly and with relatively small effort. Its knowledge-base contains heuristic knowledge about product priority and schedules, while its situation-driven control architecture allows it to react to changing conditions on the factory floor, intelligently making dispatching decisions and handing error conditions. Current development of DISPATCHER focuses on interpreting and analyzing the performance of the system. The new module diagnoses problem areas based on analysis of data collected during the operation of the dispatching system. It then suggests modifications to the configuration to alleviate the problem.