Maximization of Organizational Uptime Using an Interactive Genetic-Fuzzy Scheduling and Support System

This paper addresses the problem of scheduling multipletime and priority sensitive tasks efficiently in an environmentwhere the number of resources is limited and the resourceshave varying capabilities and restricted capacities.We use a help desk environment as our working model,however, the methodologv could also be adapted to a varietyof job shop scheduling problems in general. We introducea metric called priority time usage as a measure oftask urgency and of schedule efficiency. We also introducea method of considering user satisfaction in scheduling byutilizing fuzzy monotonic reasoning. We propose a methodologyfor implementing a heuristic genetic algorithm(GA) to accomplish the scheduling task. We discuss howsuch a system can use ongoing data about historicalschedule performance to adapt and create progressivelymore accurate schedules in the future. We considermodifications to the scheduling approach which couldallow for task inter-dependencies. We present an initiativeuser interface which we developed to aid help deskadministrators in using the system. In addition to providinga front end to the SOGA system, the interface allows theuser of the system to perform quot;what ifAtilde;cent;Acirc;not;Acirc;? analysis with actualschedules. Lastly, we present preliminary assessments ofthe utility of both the optimization engine and the userinterface