Evaluation approach for the identification of promising methods to couple central planning and autonomous control

Manufacturing companies are confronted with increasing dynamics and complexity. Commonly used central planning approaches provide a high planning accuracy, but are predominantly suitable for the application in rather static production environments. In contrast, autonomous control methods are a promising approach to cope efficiently with dynamic influences. These methods are based on decentralised decision-making of single logistic objects dependent on the current system state. A possibility to make use of the advantages of both approaches is the integration of autonomous control methods into existing, central planning systems. Up to now there is a knowledge deficit concerning the interrelations between central planning and autonomous control. Therefore, this paper describes an evaluation approach for the identification of promising couples of central planning methods and autonomous control methods. The evaluation considers the methods’ suitability for the application in specific production environments and their potential for coupling by the investigation of the methods’ compatibility. The evaluation approach is introduced and exemplarily applied with an evaluation of the coupling of several autonomous control and central planning methods.