Blackboard Agents for Mixed-Initiative Management of Integrated Process-Planning/Production-Scheduling Solutions across the Supply Chain

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As companies increasingly customize their products, move towards smaller lot production and experiment with more flexible customer/supplier arrangements, such as those made possible by Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), they increasingly require the ability to (1) respond quickly, accurately and competitively to customer requests for bids on new products and (2) efficiently work out supplier/subcontractor arrangements for these new products. This in turn requires the ability to (1) rapidly convert standard-based product specifications into process plans and (2) quickly integrate process plans for new orders into the existing production schedule to best accommodate the current state of the manufacturing enterprise.