SBIR Phase II: Advanced Planning and Scheduling Tools for Extended Enterprise Systems

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will build upon the successful development of the Phase I project that developed models and algorithms for planning and job scheduling systems. The software tool described in this proposal will allow organizations to schedule their operations in real-time to generate the optimal plan to maximizing their operational targets. During Phase I, the team created new planning and scheduling algorithms and successful empirical studies using recent innovative research in the areas of large-scale optimization and the newly developed methodology of Nested Partitions. In Phase II the team plan to further develop the concept to create successful implementations in several manufacturing firms. The technology to be developed in Phase II will greatly enhance the capability of the current planning and scheduling software tools. This innovation brings the state-of-the-art decision and optimization methodology to the Advanced Planning and Scheduling software market. In addition, planning systems developed with the proposed methodology will add new levels of flexibility for companies to more quickly adapt to changing material, operational, and market conditions. This SBIR project will make new planning and scheduling tools broadly accessible to virtually any manufacturing firm. The proposed scheduling and planning tools will enable them to communicate, collaborate, and integrate their planning and scheduling functionalities to obtain optimal results throughout their enterprise and their entire supply chain. It is expected that coordinated use of these tools will eventually create an integrated cyber-infrastructure for American manufacturing firms and create more efficient supply chains that will enable these firms to be more competitive in the global marketplace. Moreover, if successful, the development of this proposed tool will lead to fruitful attempts to develop and commercialize an advanced planning and scheduling software tools that can be used for many other sectors of the economy.