Supporting Scheduling with Temporal Logic

In this paper interval logic (Allen 1983) with some extensions is proposed for knowledge-based scheduling of production processes. The logic is embedded in a three-layered architecture consisting of the knowledge representation of the production process, the constraint checking and propagation mechanism, and a heuristic algorithm that determines which jobs are scheduled when. The representation of the production process, i.e. the required resources and their allocations by operations is object-based and facilitates so the structuring of the knowledge base. Furthermore, this object structure improves temporal reasoning since the propagation of temporal constraints can be localized partly to these objects. The explicit knowledge representation and the object-oriented structure of the whole software design promise an easier reuse of software artifacts. 1