Exploitation of Manufacturing Flexibilities in Decision Methods for Autonomous Control of Production Processes: Findings from Industrial Practice and Theoretical Analysis

The complexity of nowadays logistics processes calls for new approaches to improve the logistics performance. The recently discussed concept of autonomously controlled logistics processes promises to improve coping with the dynamics and complexity in logistics systems. Autonomous decision making of intelligent logistics objects requires decision alternatives within the processes. Manufacturing flexibility is a provider for decision alternatives as it offers multiple ways to perform a manufacturing process. A key flexibility for decision alternatives can be found in a loose allocation of products and orders during the manufacturing process. In order to gain logistic advantage by autonomous control in production, decision methods are needed capable to disclose the logistic potential of alternatives in manufacturing. This contribution presents the function of flexibility and its utilization by methods of autonomous control in production. For this purpose an analog application in industrial practice is observed to reveal insights of what autonomous control in production can look like.