INTERACTION IN HYBRID INTELLIGENT SCHEDULING

Hybrid human-computer intelligent systems for scheduling have evolved in response to the inability of algorithmic methods to handle the comp lexity of production in red manufacturing environments. They combine t he abilities of humans to recognize patterns in data and to make infer ences with computer methods for decision making. This article discusse s: (1) the factors influencing scheduling decisions in small-batch man ufacture and the role of humans in the scheduling process, (2) the pos ition of the human scheduler in hybrid intelligent decision-making pro cesses, and (3) the inadequacy of using Gantt charts as the standard i nterface for human-computer interaction in decision making. The paper proposes, for humans to be active partners in decision making, the pri mary interfaces should display detailed characteristics of jobs in a w ay that reveals patterns in the data and helps inferential processing. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.