TAPAS: a modular framework to support reuse in scheduling software development

Industrial schedulers try to take into account more and more complex aspects of manufacturing and become, as a consequence, more difficult to use efficiently. We suggest a modular framework for scheduling in order to support the development of schedulers better adapted to the workshop they are used in. An extensive reuse of past developments is made possible by the definition of a powerful, yet generic, data model, together with a fully modular architecture and the use of standards, e.g. CORBA, MMS and STEP. Examples of the first schedulers developed within this framework in an industrial context are shown.