Improving the Planning Quality in Practice with Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Accurate production planning is economic interest of manufacturing companies. Reducing the work-inprogress levels, the lead time or control efforts with the simultaneous increase of utilization and adherence to schedule might lead to instantaneous cost reduction and to increased competitiveness on long-term. In the era of digitization various artificial intelligence-based methods have been investigated by the scientific community to improve these key performance indicators. In this paper the results of a joint research project dealing with planning quality improvement with the help of Machine Learning (ML) are summarized. The results of two use case studies investigating the application and suitability of different planning approaches in the semiconductor and steel industries are presented and considerations regarding the practical application of ML assisted planning approaches are discussed.