A decision support system for production activity control

• Published in: Decision Support Systems Vol. 16; no. 2; pp. 87 - 101
• Main Authors: Grabot, Bernard, Blanc, Jean-Claude, Binda, Chantal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.02.1996; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: Data base; Decision support; Fuzzy logic; Production activity control; Production management; Fuzzy logic; Production management; Production activity control; Data base; Decision support
• ISSN: 0167-9236; 1873-5797
• DOI: 10.1016/0167-9236(95)00003-8

The increase of manufacturing system flexibility makes variations in routings, operations, machines or operators possible. These degrees of freedom may be used at the Production Activity Control (PAC) level in order to react to unpredictable events such as machine failures, absence of operators or changes in the workshop environment. In order to manage these degrees of freedom, we suggest a Decision Support System that should make the choice of solutions easier in order to reduce the consequences of a failure. This DSS complements the scheduling module of the PAC system since it may be used, either in order to slightly modify an existing schedule, or to choose the scheduling hypothesis. This DSS uses fuzzy logic and theory of possibility because of the imprecision and uncertainty of the information managed, first to model the objectives, then to spread the expected consequences of an imprecisely known event. The DSS has successively been prototyped with the SuperCard™ environment on a Macintosh microcomputer, then with the Oracle™ data base on a Sun Sparcstation.