Self-adaptive dynamic scheduling of virtual production systems

Abstract

To enhance the agility of virtual production systems (VPSs) under today's dynamic and changing manufacturing environment, a self-adaptive dynamic scheduling method based on event-driven is proposed for VPSs in this paper. This method is composed of the mechanisms and algorithm of self-adaptive dynamic scheduling. In the mechanisms, the dynamic events faced by VPSs are determined through users’ inputs or supervisory controllers’ detections, the local effects made on the schedule are analysed according to the dynamic events, and the self-adaptive measures and rules are specified correspondingly. To implement the dynamic scheduling of VPSs under the guidance of self-adaptive rules, a modified heuristic rescheduling algorithm is proposed for affected operations. A case study illustrates that the proposed method can well accomplish the dynamic scheduling of VPSs in a self-adaptive manner.

Keywords:

• Virtual production systems (VPSs)
• Dynamic scheduling
• Rescheduling algorithm

Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper was supported by a research grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (50475027 and 70271036), and the Specialised Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (20040248052).