Glad to help out.
It seems that my work (mfg. planning, scheduling, and control)
(project management, scheduling and control) fits equally under
7. SIMULATION + model (near) optimization
or
12. WORKFLOW (information and CONTROL)
Bottleneck dynamics is a system for scheduling, reactive scheduling,
or control of manufacturing processes or project management. It
simulates the pocess in a forward fashion, but simultaneously forecasts
vital global parameters such as resource bottlenecks and critical
activities. These forecasts are updated by repeating the simulation
perhaps 5 times until the forecast parameters stabilize. More
specifically the forecast parameters include resource prices, which
provide a quantitative measure of the difficulty of a resource
bottleneck; and activity delay prices, which provide a quantitative
measure of the criticality of a given job activity. Sequencing
priorities are formed as a benefit cost ratio of these prices.
A parallel method, tabu dynamics solves the same problem by a very
fast adaptation of tabu search.
The method has been broadly tested in a number of different contexts
It is thoroughly reported in the text
Heuristic Scheduling Systems, John Wiley, 1993. ISBN 0-471-57819-3.
This text has full bibliographies by a number of topics. However I also
attach some references here.
PARTIAL REFERENCES
1. with A. Sathi and S. Roth, "CALLISTO: An Intelligent Project
Management System," A.I. Magazine, 34-52 (1986) (refereed).
2. with T. Smunt, "A Planning and Scheduling System for Flexible
Manufacturing," In Flexible Manufacturing Systems: Methods and
Studies. Amsterdam, Elsevier, 151-164 (1986)
3. with A. Vepsalainen, "Priority Rules and Leadtime Estimation for Job
Shop Scheduling with Weighted Tardiness Costs," Management Science 33,
1036-1047 (1987).
4. with Peng Si Ow, "Filtered Beam Search in Scheduling,"
International Journal of Production Research 26, 35-62 (1988).
5. with A. Vepsalainen, "Improving Local Priority Rules with Global
Leadtime Estimates," Journal of Manufacturing and Operations Management
1, 102-118 (1988)..
6. with S. Kekre, S. Lawrence, and S. Rajagopalan, "SCHED-STAR: A Price
Based Shop Scheduling Module," Journal of Manufacturing and Operations
Management 1, 131-181 (1988).
7. with Medini Singh, "Implicit Costs and Prices for Resources with Busy
Periods," Journal of Manufacturing and Operations Management 1, 305-322
(1988).
8. with Peng Si Ow, "The Single Machine Early/Tardy Problem,"
Management Science 35, 177-191 (1989)
9. with S. Kekre and T. Smunt, "Predicting the Master Schedule from
Partially Known Demand," International Journal of Applied Forecasting
6, 115-125 (1990)
10. with S. Lawrence, "Resource-Constrained Multiproject Scheduling
with Tardy Costs: Comparing Myopic, Bottleneck, and Resource
Pricing Heuristics," European Journal of Operational Research 64,
168-187 (1993) .
11. with P. Ramnath, "Guided Forward Tabu/Beam Search for Scheduling
Very Large Dynamic Job Shops," Intelligent Scheduling Systems, (To
appear)
12. "Survey of Bottleneck Dynamics--A Framework for Heuristics
Scheduling Systems," Production and Operations Management, (To appear
in Production and Operations Management)
PUBLISHED BOOK
Heuristic Scheduling Systems. John Wiley. August, 1993.
WORKING PAPERS
1. with Steve Lawrence, "Myopic Dispatch Scheduling and Bottleneck
Dynamics," CMU 1993-22, submitted to Production and Operations
Management.
2. With V. Narayan, and P. Ramnath, "X-Dispatch Methods for Weighted
Tardiness Job Shops," CMU 1994-14, submitted to Production and
Operations Management.
3. with P. Lefrancois and T. Davidson, "The New Forecasting Challenge:
Networked Manufacturing," CMU 1994-21.
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As far as this "anonymous ftp site" you would have to be much more specific.
What exactly? How difficult to do? How to do? How much benefit to others?
I repeat, I am glad to help and welcome further communication.
Mykk non-filtered address is : parsifal@cmu.edu
Tom Morton