Automated planning and scheduling system for the composite component manufacturing workshop

Aerospace manufacturing system is very intricate due to the extreme material and information flow. Management of these variables need automated planning and execution system. Commercially available software systems are highly expensive and are not designed for specific need. This paper describes a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for the composite component manufacturing workshop of an aerospace enterprise. The production planning and scheduling is the core module of the MES that described in detail. The system shows the production planning and production scheduling have diverse effect on the workshop production. The significance of the automatic scheduling is emphasized. The characteristic of the composite component manufacturing and production scheduling is analyzed in detail. An improved genetic algorithm for automatic production scheduling is emphatically described. By improving some methods to the traditional genetic algorithm, the convergence rate of the improved genetic algorithm is increased. Three-layer structure is adopted to design and develop the system. Some practical manufacturing composite components are selected to verify the validity of the improved genetic algorithm and the developed system. The developed system has been applied in the composite component manufacturing workshop. The results show that working efficiency of the production planning and scheduling has been improved.