Practical Functions of a Scheduling System for Plant Operations

Abstract

This paper describes user friendly construction methods for batch plant scheduling systems. Many kinds of flexibility handling many sorts, low quantity and high value products are indispensable for a plant operating scheduling system. Sorts of products are changed little by little in demand. For that, the plant may be reconfigured. In such case, the scheduling system must have an ability to customize easily by plant operators. We have already proposed a framework for an actual plant operating scheduling system. As the enhancement of this system, this paper describes a definition method for the automatic scheduling strategies based on the visual programming technology and a manual modification method for a plan that is scheduled by the automatic scheduling mechanism. This System is implemented on Objectworks_??_Smalltalk. It is applied on many actual plants, so in this paper an example is also described.