Towards self-adaptive production systems: modular generic simulation models for continuous replanning and reconfiguration

Changing factors within markets, such as continually shortening product life cycles, increasing competition due to shorter development and order processing times, manufacturing in intercompany networks and the individualization of customer needs, create new requirements that manufacturing organizations are expected to fulfil. To be successful, manufacturing organisations and business processes have to be transformable to cope with these environmental changes. That is why the creation and implementation of self-adaptive production systems represent one vision of the near future. A first step to self-adaptive production systems is the transition from a non-recurring, static planning and operation cycle to a continous replanning and reconfiguration of work systems, supported by new planning methods and tools. Starting with a definition of self-adaptive production systems, the requirements for planning support systems for a continuous reconfiguration and replanning are derived. The paper also presents a solution for an integrated planning tool based on object-oriented, generic simulation models. The architecture and planning procedure are described in detail. The paper finally shows the first test results of the implemented prototype.