In the past, different approaches to use knowledge and
experience values within planning processes have been
researched and developed in several fields of production and
business management such as Decision Support Systems
(DSS) [11] and Business Intelligence (BI) systems [12,13]. In
terms of factory planning, such systems are employed to
process both historical data generated during former planning
processes as well as data determined in simulation
applications used during the process. This is expected to
guarantee the propagation of well-structured data to people
involved in the planning process in an appropriate form [14].
In this context, numerous software solutions exist providing
IT support within the planning phase. However, most of the
existing systems are standalone solutions that focus on one
aspect of the planning task. Therefore, these heterogeneous
systems are insufficient with regard to the evaluation of the
overall planning process [15].