Patent ID: 7853346

Claim:
A method of scheduling of processes at distributed and interacting manufacturing sites, comprising: determining a potential availability of predictive pairings of materials and work machines processing said materials over a predetermined period of time for a plurality of manufacturing sites; recording the potential availability data of said predictive pairings; sensing what materials and work machines are available in real-time; recording real-time availability data of sensed materials and work machines; comparing the real-time availability data of sensed materials and work machines with the potential availability data of predictive pairings; in case of a discrepancy, determining for each manufacturing site local pairings of materials and work machines processing said materials, processing said local pairings; recording observations as observation data, and using said observation data locally as real-time availability data of the sensed materials and work machines; transmitting the observation data from an observing manufacturing site to at least one of a server and other manufacturing sites; transmitting the observation data to potentially affected manufacturing sites; and predefining for each observation data at each manufacturing site a list of potentially affected manufacturing sites, storing said list at the observing manufacturing site, and transmitting the observation data according to the list.