While U.S. agriculture has been largely dependent on open-field production, greenhouses have served a vital role as production systems for high value crop production including floriculture/ornamental as well as fruit/vegetable crops. Including all crops together, U.S. Census (2015) reports a total of 19,309 acres used for greenhouses. In labor-intensive agricultural plant production facilities, optimal planning is especially complicated due to the uncertainties surrounding the dynamicity of workers' performance and plant growth affected by climate conditions. Algorithms needs to be designed in order to measure and monitor plants' growth and workers' performance over time.

On top of these algorithms, there is a need for development of predictive and prescriptive models capable of foreseeing the future for enabling optimal planning of many different problems such as resource allocation, scheduling, monitoring, irrigation, and layout design.