Proposal of a model of behavior for reactive scheduling systems

Economical, technical and cultural conditions lead factories to work in an uncertain and more and more complex environment. This situation induces the increase of disturbances and requires the adaptation to constraints and changes in and out of the production system. This fact implies a growing need for decision flexibility of the decision system in order to keep up performance of factories. So, the authors work on the behavior of the decision system. The authors aim consists in proposing a behavior of decision levels using the concept of cooperation to improve their flexibility. To do that, the authors use an adapted structure of the decision system they call "decentralized approach of decisions". To validate their approach, they apply the concepts proposed in this paper on the level close to operational level: scheduling. The authors work in fact to reduce reaction time. So, to face disturbances, the scheduling level makes decisions which are quickly operational because the time limit of information transmission and processing is short.