Constraint Technologies in Production Planning

by Janusz Launberg

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TACIT (Trial Application using Constraint programming in Industrial manufacTuring) is a joint technology transfer effort that will apply state-of the-art constraint technologies in the production planning domain. The project is now in the negotiation phase, expected start is last quarter of 1996.

The aim of the project is to develop three scheduling applications based on models of real production processes and to evaluate the practical usefulness of such tools in everyday planning of the industrial partners. The application domains vary from steel manufacturing and production and assembly of building elements to exploration of planning alternatives in CIM applications (IQSOFT and its industrial partner). The project involves five partners: PrologIA (coordinator) and Lafarge Plâtre in France, The Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) and Ovako Steel AB in Sweden, and IQSOFT Intelligent Software, Ltd. in Budapest, Hungary. To IQSOFT there is a Hungarian industrial company associated. The Swedish and French partners are 50% financed by the the Esprit Emerging Software Technologies programme while the Hungarian partners are expected to be partially funded by the INCO programme.

The Swedish trial application develops a production planning system for Ovako Steel. The system involves production planing for steel billets and bars. This flow of material constitute the raw material to the other production lines at Ovako Steel. Solving this complex planning problem will result in reduction in through-put times, work in progress (WIP) and inventory.

Please contact:
Janusz Launberg - SICS
Tel: +46 8 752 1504
E-mail: janusz@sics.se