Constraint Handling in Manufacturing Planning Systems

This paper deals with constraint handling in manufacturing. It starts with a basic de nition of the constraint satisfaction problem, followed by a description of consistency enforcing and constraint guided search. Constraint handling in scheduling problems is the main topic of the paper also presenting di erent types of schedule construction methods and explaining the use of temporal constraints. Special attention is given to the task of mid-term production planning. First, production planning in ordinary MRP II-based systems is introduced, followed by the presentation of the master production scheduling leitstand (MPSL), a research and development activity of a \Forschungsschwerpunkt" at the University GH Essen.