Flexible shop floor control in a decentralized production environment

Decentralized production structures are able to cope with turbulences such as e.g. customer specific products with increasing complexity, fluctuations of demand and shortened product life cycles. Several concepts have therefore been developed successfully (e.g. production segments). In contrast to these decentralized structures, order management is based mostly on centralized concepts. To solve the problems of centralized planning for a decentralized organization structure and to realize the potentials of these structures, an approach of flexible time-frames is developed. The aim of this approach is to discover the optimization potentials (e.g. set up time, material input, etc.) in pooling orders, with consideration of the effects on central logistic indicators e.g. throughput time, work in process or utilization. Feedback loops support the method of flexible time-frames and help to create a continuous improvement process for rough and detailed scheduling of orders as well as the design of products and production structures. The described method allows one to handle disturbances (e.g. in the supply chain) or extremely short planned orders, which is the basis for a robust and agile production system.