"Agent-Based Scheduling and Decision-Support for the Paper Industry"

11/13/1998: [time not recorded]
[location not recorded]

Abstract: In this talk, I'll describe a new agent-based optimization and decision-support architecture that we have successfully applied to scheduling paper manufacturing and distribution. Scheduling the production and distribution of paper is an extremely complex task requiring the consideration of numerous constraints and objectives. Problem complexity is compounded by process interactions wherein the scheduling of one stage of the production process may negatively impact downstream processes. In contrast to earlier approaches, our system considers multiple scheduling objectives and multiple stages of paper manufacturing and distribution simultaneously in a global multi-criteria optimization framework. It generates multiple scheduling alternatives by using a team of agents that employ a portfolio of algorithms, some based on traditional operations-research approaches and others based on heuristic search. The system encourages the human schedulers to work cooperatively with the system to explore alternatives and to inject their expertise to improve solution quality. By functioning as an intelligent assistant, our system relieves the schedulers of mundane computational tasks and allows them to focus on the objectives of the enterprise and decision making. Our system is in use at several paper mills in North America and has resulted in significant cost savings and improved customer satisfaction. These positive results arose from improved chedule quality and improvements in the business process that our decision-support approach has fostered.

Last updated: Mon Jun 19 17:44:06 2006