Real-time, Cooperative Enterprises for Customized Mass Production; Challenges and Solution Approaches

Abstract The paper 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.