CRONOS-III: Requirements for a knowledge-based scheduling tool covering a broad class of production environments

Abstract

Knowledge-based system technology has been successfully applied in recent years to scheduling problems. CRONOS-II is an experimental knowledge-based scheduler developed by the authors for applications in job-shop production environments. In this paper, after a brief survey of the main features of CRONOS-II, the problem of extending it to deal also with aspects proper of flow-shop production is faced. The requirements for a new generalized version of the system, called CRONOS-III, are presented and ideas for their implementation are discussed.