| CPC G06Q 10/06314 (2013.01) [G06Q 10/04 (2013.01); G06Q 10/06313 (2013.01); G06Q 10/06316 (2013.01); G06Q 10/0633 (2013.01); G06Q 10/0637 (2013.01); G06Q 50/04 (2013.01)] | 16 Claims |
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1. A system for providing short-term dispatching decisions for operating a number of resources involved in a number of production processes, each production process comprising a number of production operations for at least one industrial robot, wherein the system comprises at least one processor which is configured to perform the following steps:
a) obtaining a long-term production schedule containing production operations for a set of production orders by using forecasted values for production operation durations, wherein the long-term production schedule is received from an offline scheduling system and includes a set of pre-determined production constraints, and wherein at least one pre-determined production constraint of the set of pre-determined production constraints is relaxed in order to reduce the complexity of the long- term production scheduling comprising all orders of the set of production orders at once;
b) deriving dispatching recommendations for suitable order release dates, dispatching sequences and/or resource choices of all subsequent operational dispatching decisions from the obtained long-term production schedule;
c) obtaining a released subset of the set of production orders having each a release date and including information of all possible dispatching sequences and logical dependencies between them to produce a requested product;
d) iteratively calculating a limited number of subsequent short-term operational dispatching decisions based on operational constraints which are monitored during the said operation of the number of resources involved in the number of production processes and on the derived dispatching recommendations which support a decision-making in favor of optimizing the overall production process with respect to long-term objectives, wherein the long-term objectives comprise respective due dates at which respective individual orders of the subset of production orders should be completed, wherein optimizing the overall production process includes backward iteration wherein respective start times of the respective individual orders are placed in such a way that the respective individual orders are completed as close to the respective due date as possible, and wherein only those dispatching recommendations whose order start times in the long-term production schedule are within a predetermined range of a current time are incorporated into the calculation of the limited number of subsequent operational dispatching decisions;
e) outputting, by the at least one processor accessing an output device, each calculated short-term operational dispatching decision to a production executer; and
f) executing the released subset of production orders by operating the number of production processes according to the said subsequent short-term operational dispatching decisions and controlling performance of the production operations by the at least one industrial robot.
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