Coordinated Production Scheduling of Prefabricated Building Components

A decision support system (DSS) for coordinated prefabrication production scheduling is described in this paper. The proposed DSS supports the four key elements of production (re)scheduling, namely, conflict detection, determination of priority for conflict resolution, generation and evaluation of alternatives/options for conflict resolution, and ranking of outcomes for negotiation. The system combines the use of an explicit constraints-based scheduling model, genetic algorithms (GA) for the determination of scheduling parameters and conflict resolution priorities, and constraint programming (CP) to facilitate the rapid determination of several alternative schedules subject to the requirement of minimum disruption of existing plans.