AN INTELLIGENT SYSTEM FOR US COAST GUARD CUTTER SCHEDULING

A software system developed for the United States Coast Guard for prod ucing a day to day schedule for a fleet of ships over a one year perio d is presented. The development process from knowledge elicitation thr ough model building to the analysis of computational performance is ad dressed and the position of scheduling within a taxonomy of decision p roblems is discussed with reference to appropriate methodology. A sche dule generator and a discrete optimisation model lie at the heart of t he system and a diagnostic analyzer is incorporated to deal with vario us subjective and objective issues. The design philosophy and the inte gration in a database information support system is discussed. In addi tion to its tactical uses the system is increasingly used as a strateg ic investigative tool.