Wizard: A System for Predictive, Reactive and Interactive Multi-Resource Scheduling

Of the many production planning and control systems available today almost none deal with the scheduling of multi-resource operations in short-term scheduling, i.e., within the next few days. In short-term scheduling both predictive and reactive usage is important. An initial plan must be created predictively; this can be done periodically. As soon as changes become necessary, e.g. by unforeseen events, a person responsible for reactive maintenance of the schedule (called the scheduler) can decide whether he interactively adapts the schedule or initiates a semi-automatic rescheduling. From our experiences we feel that the term \reactive scheduling" refers more to the use of a scheduling system than to inherent qualities of a scheduling method. We developed and describe here a knowledge-based method and implemented it in our system wizard which can be used for automatic and interactive scheduling initiated in both a predictive and a reactive manner.