A framework for decision support in production scheduling tasks

Production scheduling in industrial practice is still primarily a manual task, despite the immense research efforts and the fact that manual scheduling is a very complex task. In this paper, the allocation of tasks between scheduling systems and human schedulers for various types of production units is addressed. The human factor in production scheduling is described using existing models from cognitive psychology. The allocation of scheduling sub-tasks is discussed, based on characteristics of human schedulers and scheduling systems. These sub-tasks are shown to depend on the type of production unit to be scheduled. Four case studies are described to illustrate the theoretical framework.