APPROACHES AND ISSUES IN SCHEDULING A DISTRIBUTED SHOP-FLOOR ENVIRONMENT

There is increasing trend towards more autonomous and distributed shop floor organisations. Operational characteristics of such a shop-floor will derive from independently acting but cooperating entities. These would have capabilities for scheduling in relative isolation while re solving conflicts among themselves to maintain consistency between loc al schedules. We review both negotiation and the emerging behaviour-ba sed methods for scheduling and coordinating distributed entities withi n both hierarchical and heterarchical control structures. The approach es are reviewed with a focus on the issues that are of practical impor tance. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.