This chapter deals with the application of MASs to planning, scheduling, and control activities in manufacturing systems. The very general aspects relevant to such activities were already introduced in Chapter 2. However, before detailing these applications, the usual meanings of the terms planning, scheduling, and control in manufacturing must be further defined, as must the approaches to face them that are generally proposed by practitioners and scientific communities.

Planning is the activity devoted to defining plans. A plan specifies what an organization wants to achieve in the future. In manufacturing industries, plans may involve strategies (e.g., the acquisition of new market shares or the launch of a new product line) laid out over quite long-term outlooks (quarters or years), as well as decisions about the use of the production facilities for imminent time periods (e.g., the production plan for the next quarter specified on a weekly basis). A plan thus characterizes the behavior of the organization, or part of it. To meet the objectives or requirements specified in a plan, a company (i.e., a manufacturing system MS) must efficiently use available resources (people, machines, tools, information, and so on) following an appropriate implementation strategy. The success of the company depends on its ability to define or select the most appropriate plan (e.g., the most profitable) and its ability to attain the goals specified therein: namely, on how effective the adopted implementation strategy will prove to be.

Plans...