Hierarchical Flow Control: A Framework For Scheduling and Planning Discrete Events in Manufacturing Systems. Revision

Abstract
Operating policies for manufacturing systems must respond to important discrete events such as machine failures, setups, demand changes, expedited batches, etc. These feedback policies must be based on realistic models, and they must be computationally tractable. In this paper, we develop a hierarchical framework for research and algorithm development in scheduling and planning. The structure of the hierarchy is systematically based on the characteristics of the specific kind of production that is being controlled. The levels of the hierarchy correspond to classes of events that have distinct frequencies of occurrence. There have been many hierarchical scheduling and planning algorithms, some quite practical and successful. However, there has been no systematic justification of this structure. The main contribution of this paper is a framework for studying and synthesizing such a structure.

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