Control of items in a complex system by using fluid models and solving continuous linear programs

• US 20060015305A1
• Filed: 05/02/2005
• Published: 01/19/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/26/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Gideon Weiss
• Original Assignee: Gideon Weiss
• Inventors: Weiss, Gideon
• Application Number:
  US11/118,151
• Publication Number:
  US 20060015305A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 703/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

A method and apparatus for the control of a system comprising of a plurality of items through the scheduling of actions and the allocation of resources is disclosed. Primary areas of utility include manufacturing systems, city wide vehicle traffic control, multiple project scheduling, communications networks and economic systems. The method and apparatus comprise modeling the parts in such a system as fluid, formulating the control problem as a continuous linear program, using a novel algorithm to solve it, displaying the fluid solution in a meaningful way, and using the fluid solution in the control of the system.

Claims

1. A graphic display of a system, said system comprising a plurality of discrete items, where each of said items is in one of a plurality of classes, and evolution of the system over a plurality of times comprises some changes in the classes of the items, and said system can be approximated by a plurality of state functions, where each state function corresponds to one class, and the value of the state function at each of the plurality of times approximates the number of item in the system belonging to the corresponding class at that time, the graphic display comprising a plot of each of the state functions as a function of time, and the grouping of the plots of the plurality of the state functions in such a way that the approximate behavior of the entire system over time can be viewed from the graphic display.

2. The graphic display of claim 16, with the addition of a plurality of horizontal lines in the plot of each state function as a function of time, where said horizontal lines display the position of a plurality of sampled discrete items in the buffer, and where said lines do not intersect each other, and where each line represents a single item from the time that it enters the buffer until the time that it leaves the buffer.

3. The graphic display of claim 16, with the addition of a graphic user interface which allows a user to interactively move some of the horizontal lines which represent discrete items, and where the graphic user interface updates the other horizontal lines of the graphic display whenever the user moves one of the lines.