A fuzzy, knowledge-based decision support tool for production operations management

Abstract: Production operations managers frequently have to make decisions based on vague, imprecise knowledge. Any software tool developed to aid their decision making needs to take into account the approximate nature of the information available to them and the inexact knowledge to which individual facts are applied. Much of this knowledge is expressed as vague, linguistic articulations. A convenient framework for dealing with such approximate knowledge is fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory. As a specific example, a system was developed for providing decision support in the Just-in-Time area of production operations management.