A Testbed for Scheduling with Alternative Process Plans

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned with the problem of real-time reactive scheduling using alternative process plans. The usefulness of alternative process plans for relieving bottlenecks and increasing throughput has been well established in the literature. Despite the advantages of using alternative plans, the complexity of this problem has prevented it from being studied extensively. Therefore, this paper has three aims. The first aim is to review the groundwork that has been laid to date. The second aim is to identify the key research issues that need to be addressed before the goal of real-time reactive scheduling with alternative process plans can be realized. The third aim of the paper is to describe a testbed currently under development for testing and benchmarking scheduling algorithms which use alternative process plans.

Key Words:

• alternative process plans
• scheduling