Process Planning and Scheduling for Distributed Manufacturing (Hardcover, 2007 ed.)

The process planning and scheduling issues of intelligent and distributed manufacturing are crucial nowadays due to the need for enterprises to be adaptive, re-configurable, collaborative and flexible enough to support the emergence of worldwide competition and dynamic and mass-customized markets. With this increasing dynamism of decentralized manufacturing systems and processes, more effective and efficient decision-making techniques are needed.

Unlike traditional methodologies for rather centralized and static process planning and scheduling, Process Planning and Scheduling for Distributed Manufacturing is the first book to focus on emerging technologies for distributed intelligent decision-making in process planning and dynamic scheduling. As a collection of chapters on state-of-the art research in this area; this book consists of two major sections: the first section presents a review of several key areas of research in process planning and scheduling (e.g. adaptive process planning, dynamic scheduling, and process planning and scheduling integration), and the second section presents an in-depth treatment of particular techniques, from agent-based resource scheduling to function block enabled process planning and execution control. Each chapter addresses a specific problem domain and offers practical solutions to solve the problem.

Given the essential role manufacturing plays in the economic development of all industrial nations, Process Planning and Scheduling for Distributed Manufacturing will be of interest to academic researchers, practising engineers and graduate students for whom it will provide a better understanding of the present state and future trends ofresearch in this important area.