The Evolution of Prototype Architectures Developed for the Scheduling Software Integration Project
Frank Riddick, C M. Lecapitaine · 2000
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is collaborating with vendors, users, and university researchers to develop a virtual manufacturing testbed. This testbed contains a number of software research prototypes, which address both optimization and integration issues for a wide range of software applications, including scheduling. This report describes the evolution and current state of a prototype that integrates scheduling applications with data collection systems. 1 Introduction Manufacturing plays a vital role in the world's economy. In the United States alone, there are tens of thousands of factories producing metal-fabricated parts. These factories employ millions of people and ship billions of dollars worth of products every year [17]. One of the daily problems faced by the managers of these factories is scheduling. Discrete-event, simulation-based scheduling packages are used widely by factory managers around the world. These packages include a large number...