Human-machine Mixed-initiative system for Integrated planning and scheduling in the Manufacturing industry

In industry, planning and scheduling are two critical tasks that affect productivity. They arc usually considered as distinct processes to be performed sequentially. However, to significantly improve the system performance, the literature recommends integrating them as complementary processes. Moreover, there is an ambition to use automated systems motivated by the efficiency increase. Automated systems are notorious for ignoring human preferences, which may reflect choices that are too context-dependent to generalize. This paper proposes a Mixed-Initiative System (MIS) for integrated planning and scheduling, which enables the user to collaborate with a mathematical model to find an "ideal" production schedule that satisfies the user's preferences. For this purpose, a User Interface (UI) is designed to facilitate interactions between the system and the user. The MIS has been tested with a practical case in the manufacturing industry and demonstrates the potential to interact rapidly to achieve a satisfactory schedule.