System and method for controlling the operations of a manufacturing facility

A method for controlling the operations of a manufacturing facility, the method which comprises:

• a) providing a plurality of production resources that execute a production process according to a production schedule;
• b) providing a manufacturing execution system comprised of, at engineering level, a production modeler for modeling the production resources and their production dependencies and/or constraints and a production scheduler for scheduling the production process according to production orders to be executed thereby using the data model of the production modeler;
• c) providing at least one man machine interface and/or graphical user interface enabling a user to enter production orders and/or production scheduling data into the manufacturing execution system and to display data that are relevant for the user when scheduling the production process in order to have the user's production order scheduled and executed accordingly;
• d) providing a production scheduler database for storing therein all production orders and/or production scheduling data and for providing predefined data stored in the database to the man machine interface and/or graphical user interface for the user in charge of scheduling;
• wherein the predefined data are determined sensitive data and/or sensitive class of data out of the data stored in the database, and wherein the sensitive data and/or sensitive class of data are required for a real-time scheduling;
• e) providing a data server process that updates the sensitive data and/or sensitive class of data for the users when a user modifies at least part of the sensitive data and/or sensitive class of data, the data server process being enabled to execute an event list queue containing the data modification events launched by the database, and the data server process being further enabled to:
• i) periodically check the event list queue for data modification events covering the sensitive data and/or sensitive class of data;
• ii) read from the database only the modified data of the sensitive data and/or the sensitive class of data;
• and
• iii) merge the modified data with the existing data to generate updated data accessible by all users.