SBIR Phase I: Adaptive Job Scheduling Software for Cutting Room Operations

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在为切割室操作创建自适应作业调度软件。裁剪室主要用于缝制商品（服装，家具，箱包等）的生产以及许多其他行业。如今，剪辑室经理依靠个人经验、电子表格、电子邮件、传真、白板，以及经常过时的经验法则来安排材料、劳动力和设备。目前还没有软件能够提供实时决策支持，帮助他们以最佳的资源利用方式执行切割作业。该项目是一个可配置的软件，可以实时建模和优化许多行业切割操作的复杂变量。该软件将收集现场生产数据，并进行计算，以产生优化切割室设备、劳动力和材料使用的工作计划。进一步的创新是增加了自适应控制。这将使用实际操作性能来提供反馈，以便对调度计算进行微调。通过降低劳动力成本、提高机器利用率和缩短交货时间，自适应作业调度软件的使用预计将使切割生产率提高20%。该项目的商业潜力是使裁切室的操作更有成效，以保留美国制造业的就业机会。激烈的国际竞争摧毁了美国的缝制行业，使大多数国内产品在海外劳动力价格上失去了竞争力。因此，缝制产品技术的新创新集中在软件上，使制造商能够将生产外包给低成本国家，而不是改善国内制造业和保护美国的就业机会。然而，最近发展的高度工程化的材料，如防弹衣，需要熟练的劳动力来确保成品的质量标准。这些技能在国内劳动力资源中比在低成本、未经培训、会说外语的海外劳动力资源中更容易找到。此外，国内切割作业比海上作业更有可能使用自动化切割室设备来提高生产率。这种自动化设备可以通过有效的作业调度软件来提高效率。生产率提高20%将有助于国内制造商抵消劳动力成本，以保持全球竞争力，并保留约7.5万个美国制造业就业岗位。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to create adaptive job scheduling software for cutting room operations. Cutting rooms are used primarily for the production of sewn goods (apparel, furniture, luggage, etc) as well as many other industries. Today, cutting room managers rely on personal experience, spreadsheets, e-mails, faxes, whiteboards and often outdated rules-of-thumb to schedule material, labor and equipment for their operations. There is currently no software that provides real-time decision support to assist them in executing cutting operations with optimal resource usage. This project is configurable software that can model and optimize, in real-time, the complex variables of cutting operations across many industry segments. The software will collect live manufacturing data and perform calculations to produce job schedules that optimize equipment, labor and material usage in cutting rooms. A further innovation is the addition of adaptive control. This will use actual operational performance to provide feedback in order to fine-tune the scheduling calculations. The use of adaptive job scheduling software is expected to result in a 20% increase in cutting productivity, as measured by lower labor costs, improved machine utilization and shorter lead times. The commercial potential of this project is to make cutting room operations more productive in order to retain U.S. manufacturing jobs. The U.S. sewn goods industries have been devastated by intense international competition that has made most domestic production non-competitive against off-shore labor rates. As a result, new innovations in sewn goods technology have focused on software that enabled manufacturers to outsource production low-cost countries instead of improvements for domestic manufacturing and protection of U.S. jobs. However, recent developments in highly engineered materials, such as body armor, require skilled labor to ensure quality standards of the finished product. These skill sets are more reliably found in domestic labor pools than in low-cost, untrained, foreign language, off-shore labor pools. Furthermore, domestic cutting operations are more likely than off-shore operations to use automated cut room equipment to increase productivity. This automated equipment can be made more efficient with effective job scheduling software. A 20% gain in productivity would help domestic manufacturers offset labor costs to maintain global competitiveness and retain an estimated 75,000 US manufacturing jobs.