Understanding Autonomous Cooperation and Control in Logistics

One of the great challenges in flexible production and supply chains is the availability of necessary information at any time and place. Autonomous logistics processes can bring about fast and flexible adaptations to change. This book identifies autonomous logistics processes and details how they differ from conventionally managed processes. Coverage also describes the changes that autonomy will cause in order processing.Autonomous co-operation addresses the control problem of logistic processes characterized by dynamical changing parameters and complex system behaviour. During control procedures erratic, non-predictable changes of parameters can occur. Therefore, future planning and control has to face severe and vital uncertainties. Conventional hierarchical systems are amplifying these difficulties because of the additional time delay of information transfer and additional calculation time. On the other hand, autonomous co-operation enables logistic objects (e.g. a single container) in decentralized structures to collect and evaluate information simultaneously to any event of change, so that they can render and execute decisions on their own. Therefore, this book aims to give a profound understanding of autonomous co-operation and to examine its potentials to increase the robustness and positive emergence of logistic processes substantially.