| Problems of large-scale coordination
and logistics are ubiquitous, and better solutions are becoming increasingly
critical in many domains. In manufacturing, trends toward industrial globalization
and constrained market focus on high value-adding products, together with
new coordination concepts such as electronic marketplaces, require organizations
to become more agile. Military command and control infra-structure is faced
with shrinking budgets and personnel, even though current geopolitical
realities demand improved capability for rapid crisis-action mission planning
and deployment. The rising cost of health care places a premium on more
efficient methods for administration and delivery.
Intelligent systems technologies provide new opportunities for addressing
such problems of large-scale planning, scheduling and control. The Intelligent
Coordination and Logistics Laboratory (ICLL) is developing new theories,
techniques and software technologies that capitalize on these opportunities
and enable flexible, robust, efficient, and high quality management and
control of complex organizations. Our research is tackling fundamental
technological challenges relating to problem complexity and solution/system
scalability, decision-making under diverse and complex constraints, time-stressed
decision-making in dynamic domains, human-computer collaboration, multi-agent
and distributed decision-making, and solution/system reconfigurability,
reuse and self-improvement. Methodologically, our research is driven by
the requirements and complexities of actual applications; we are developing,
validating and transitioning intelligent planning and scheduling tools
in a variety of application contexts spanning manufacturing management,
transportation logistics, and space mission planning. |
