Decentralized Decision-making Structures in Production Planning and Control Based on Cybernetic Principles

The increased turbulence of corporate environments for production enterprises is characterized by shortened product lifecycles and cumulative variants. Customers demand smaller delivery lotsizes with higher variance and shorter delivery times. Short lead times and the resulting need for fast reaction to dynamically changing environments play a major role in production planning and control (Wiehndahl, 2006). However, today’s Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are not able to predict and coordinate detailed micro sequences of the production between the operators and the technological resources. These systems focus the planning and scheduling of machines and technical resources and they insufficiently support the operational coordination of the operator-machine interaction. This means that operators face situations where they have to make many decisions without being sufficiently supported by IT-systems. They are often provided with an excess of irrelevant and useless information, while critical coordination information is not available, at least not at justifiable efforts. The individual qualification, knowledge and experience of the operators become increasingly important for manufacturing companies. As production systems become increasingly complex and the productivity of both machines and operators rises, the responsibility of each operator rises as well.