Holonic Engineering Scheduling

Many manufacturers design products based on requirements and specifications provided by the customer. In this case, the engineering function is not an R&D environment per se. The scheduling of engineering resources is critical to minimizing lead-time to ensure time is not swallowed up in engineering with little time left to fabricate. The misallocation of engineering resources due to poor or non-existent scheduling can lead to a situation where lead time is artificially inflated and can result in a late customer delivery. Any developed schedule represents a constraint in-and-of-itself. Multiple schedules should be developed to leverage multiple engineers. A time buffer should be used to accommodate engineering variation as well as to facilitate preemptive design work with low work content time that may arrive on an ad hoc basis. Once the schedule is developed, engineers should consume the schedules as equally as possible in time–Multiple Constraint Synchronization (MCS