  Ensuring flexible and efficient manufacturing of customized products in an
increasing dynamic and turbulent environment without sacrificing cost
effectiveness, product quality and on-time delivery has become a key issue for
most industrial enterprises. A promising approach to cope with this challenge
is the integration of cognitive capabilities in systems and processes with the
aim of expanding the knowledge base used to perform managerial and operational
tasks. In this work, a novel approach to real-time rescheduling is proposed in
order to achieve sustainable improvements in flexibility and adaptability of
production systems through the integration of artificial cognitive
capabilities, involving perception, reasoning/learning and planning skills.
Moreover, an industrial example is discussed where the SOAR cognitive
architecture capabilities are integrated in a software prototype, showing that
the approach enables the rescheduling system to respond to events in an
autonomic way, and to acquire experience through intensive simulation while
performing repair tasks.
