| Customer |
NASA |
| Need |
NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) is responsible
for scheduling the flight activities of the Space Shuttle and
the International Space Station. In the past, much of
the scheduling for Space Shuttle missions had been carried out
manually. However, the International Space Station operates
continuously and requires the planning and scheduling of many
more activities. Thus, NASA-JSC needed tools to automate
the scheduling of International Space Station assembly and operations. |
| Solution |
Stottler Henke developed the Intelligent
Flight Activity Planner (IFAP) that assists both a high-level
planning and detailed scheduling. Several weeks before
the activity performance period, NASA planners use the high-level
planning component to assign flight activities to specific days.
User-definable metrics enable the planners to quantify the risks
of each plan. In the days before the activity performance
period, planners use IFAP to convert the high-level plan into
a detailed schedule which specifies for each activity the specific
resources to be utilized and the exact execution time.
Planners control the automated scheduling process by selecting
from a list of intelligent heuristics. The IFAP scheduling
engine uses Stottler Henke's intelligent entities technology
to control the detailed scheduling. |
| Status |
IFAP has been integrated into NASA's Consolidated
Planning System which is used operationally in Mission Control
for Space Shuttle and International Space Station planning and
scheduling. |
Related
Applications |
Stottler Henke's artificial intelligence-based
planning and scheduling technology can be applied to other complex
planning and scheduling problems such as those encountered in
manufacturing, facility utilization, construction scheduling,
and complex project management. |
