SBIR Phase I: A Bottleneck Dynamics Decision Support System for Scheduling and Control

小行星9560046 这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目开发了一种新的面向模拟的方法，用于快速，准确和直观的制造业务调度。 在零库存、基于时间的竞争和按订单生产的压力下，有限调度在工业实践中逐渐出现。 然而，目前的方法是简单的模拟接近手动控制，否则相当复杂和昂贵的自动控制器，允许与用户的互动很少。 这种方法称为瓶颈动态，预计将允许全方位的手动，自动或混合控制和快速工作。 瓶颈动态在许多个体活动不占主导地位的商店中是直观的，即，该结构接近于凸形（总体上）。 这表明：（a）启发式双重价格是有意义的，提供近似的敏感性分析，（B）这种价格可以用来形成各种各样的价格学，包括不同层次和商店部分之间的转移定价，（c）启发式价格可以通过迭代（爬山）来改进。 这种调度方法已经在各种目标的自动排序的计算研究中进行了探索。 SBIR第一阶段将通过实验室测试将瓶颈动态扩展到路由、并行机和顺序相关设置。 第二阶段预计将增加一个决策支持接口和两级调度和控制，并测试一个商业系统的原型。 瓶颈动力学预计将为小型制造商提供手动，自动和混合使用模式的计划和调度软件工具。 它将以合理的成本支持他们快速、准确、易于实现和使用的有限容量调度操作。

9560046 Morton This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project develops a new simulation-oriented methodology for fast, accurate, and intuitive scheduling in manufacturing operations. Under escalating pressures of zero inventories, time based competition, and make-to-order requirements, finite scheduling is emerging in industrial practice. However, current methods are simple simulation approached with manual control or else rather complex and expensive automatic schedulers that allow little interaction with the user. This methodology, called bottleneck dynamics, is expected to allow a full range of manual, automatic, or mixed control and work fast. Bottleneck dynamics is intuitive in many shops where individual activities do not dominate, i.e., the structure is close to convex (in the aggregate). This suggests that: (a) heuristic dual prices are meaningful, providing approximate sensitivity analysis, (b) such prices can be used to fashion a broad variety of heuristics, including transfer pricing between different levels and parts of the shop, and (c) heuristic prices can be improved by iteration (hill climbing). This approach to scheduling has been explored in computational studies on automatic sequencing for a variety of objectives. The SBIR Phase I will extend bottleneck dynamics to routing, parallel machines, and sequence dependent setups through laboratory testing. Phase II is projected to add a decision support interface and two-level scheduling and control, and to test a prototype of a commercial system. Bottleneck dynamics is expected to provide small manufacturers with planning and scheduling software tools in manual, automatic and mixed modes of use. It is expected to support them in fast, accurate, easy-to-implement-and-use finite capacity scheduling opereations at affodable costs.