Acquisition of expert’s knowledge for high-mix and low-volume production scheduling problem

The objective of the study is to propose a systematic method for acquiring experts’ knowledge that is to be integrated with a digital twin (DT) to construct a production system that is robust against unpredicted changes in a production environment. Especially, the paper focuses on the knowledge acquisition for the high-mix and low-volume (HMLV) production scheduling problem, because quick modification of the current schedule considering complicated constraints among processes, resources, delivery time, and so forth is regarded as a typical problem that only human experts can solve. Through a case study in the die machining industry, the paper demonstrates the validity and the limitation of the method.