Novel IT Approaches and Solutions towards Real-time, Cooperative Enterprises

Abstract In addition of the four main R&D directions, i.e., adaptive manufacturing, digital manufacturing, knowledge-based manufacturing, and networked manufacturing, emphasized by the European initiative Manufuture, two additional requirements, i.e., the real-timeness and cooperativeness of production structures are also outlined in the paper, which are of high and increasing importance. The paper also underlines the main requirements of customized mass production, with special emphasis on the real-time ability and cooperativeness. Main goals of 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 are highlighted. An integrated approach is presented for planning the behavior of the system at network-, factory- and plant level, as well as for adapting various plans to real execution conditions.