Co-operative Reactive Scheduling: Schedule Execution using Perturbation Analysis

Resource allocation for manufacturing systems (including scheduling, reactive scheduling, and control of discrete event systems) is a typical non-linear dynamic system, often at the edge of chaos. In previous work, we developed an architecture for resource allocation where a reactive scheduler co-operates with an autonomous on-line shop floor control (SFC) system to combine high performance with reactivity and robustness against disturbances. The on-line SFC system has to react to disturbances, while following the existing schedule as good as possible. This “schedule execution” problem is not trivial, because the decisions taken by the on-line SFC system are local decisions, that affect the global performance in a