AN INTERACTION PREDICTION APPROACH TO HIERARCHICAL PRODUCTION PLANNING AND CONTROL WITH DELAY INTERACTION EQUATIONS/

The paper proposes an interaction/prediction approach to interaction-d elay-based hierarchical production planning and control in flexible au tomation workshops (FAWs), A mathematical model with delay interaction equations is built up to solve the problem of hierarchical production planning (HPP) in FAWs. An interaction/prediction algorithm for HPP i s then deduced in detail and its properties and necessary condition fo r feasibility ape proved. The algorithm has been adopted to develop th e software package named as interaction/prediction algorithm with inte raction-delay (IPAD), by means of which, examples of HPP in FAWs have been studied. In this paper, the application of the algorithm is intro duced in detail through one of those examples. As compared with the ex isting HPP approaches, the present algorithm is more suitable for deco mposing optimally medium-term plans (assigned to an FAW by CIMS/MRP II ) into short-term plans (to be executed by FMSs in the FAW), especiall y for the case that workpieces are transported between FMSs through a shop storage with a delay of a step. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.