Domain-based production configuration with constraint satisfaction

Abstract

Production configuration is well recognised as an effective means of planning production processes for product families. The major challenge of production configuration originates from the handling of the numerous constraints associated with product and process variety. This paper develops a constraint satisfaction approach to facilitate production configuration decisions regarding constraint identification, representation, and evaluation. A domain-based model is formulated to conceptualise the production configuration process, involving inter-connections among multiple domains in conjunction with diverse domain decision variables and constraints. Within the domain framework, production configuration is formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), which is solved using constraint heuristic search. Within constraint heuristic search, a decision propagation structure incorporating a connectionist approach is developed to facilitate the exploration of solution spaces. A case study of textile spindle production configuration is elaborated to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the domain-based CSP model for production configuration.

Keywords:

• production planning
• operations planning
• production modelling