Real-time, cooperative enterprises for customised mass production

1 The paper discusses the main requirements that are posed by customized mass production towards managing production networks. Special emphasis is put on real-time, cooperative behaviour. We present a large-scale national industry-academia R&D project aimed at improving the performance of a production network that produces consumer goods in large quantities and variability. An integrated approach is outlined for planning and scheduling the behaviour of the system at network-, factory-and plant levels, as well as for adapting the various plans and schedules to real execution conditions. Novel, integrated solutions are described for rolling horizon production scheduling of a factory with more than 100 production lines, for real-time control of daily production supported by information fusion and simulation, as well as for cooperative component supply. The industrial deployment of the integrated systems is also presented together with some lessons of their routine application. 1. Introduction Markets are typically served by competing production networks that consist of autonomous enterprises. Hence, as competition and cooperation go on hand in hand, the whole operation of the economy becomes more complex. Nodes and structures of networks are changing, thus making company relations more dynamic and less predictable. Today's greatest pressures are time compression, customization and cost reduction: the market increasingly demands products that are customized, yet available with shorter delivery times. While any network as a whole is driven by the overall objectives to meet customer demand at the possible minimal production and logistic costs, the efficiency of operations and the economical use of material, energy and resources hinges on the local decisions of the autonomous partners. Taking high service level as their main priority, manufacturers can hedge against uncertainties only by capacity and/or material buffers. This however, incurs extra equipment, labor, inventory and organizational costs, as well as – especially under dynamic market conditions – the risk of producing obsolete inventory. Enterprises are independent entities, with their own resources, performance objectives and internal decision mechanisms. They have to find their specific trade-offs between service level and cost that are acceptable for their partners. Hence, an overall solution can only emerge from the interaction of local and asynchronous decisions (Monostori et al., 2006). The key decisions are related at least to three distinct levels: • There is an inevitable need to design both the architecture and behaviour of such network organizations that are able to perceive and respond to market demand by sustaining coordination and, if …