Cognitive Transportation Modules for Adaptive Material Flow Systems

The ongoing trend towards mass customization with an increasing number of product variants leads to the objective of transformable systems in production and transportation technology. In a supply network, numerous unexpected events such as changing amounts of requested materials, changing transportation times between production sites or failure of production equipment can occur, which might affect the entire network. Future logistic systems will therefore have to adapt quickly and flexibly to new requirements. This contribution describes a new approach to control material flow systems using a distributed network of cognitive transportation modules. These subsystems are capable of making local decisions, leading to the desired global system behavior without the need for a central planning entity. Using this approach, future material flow systems are supposed to better be able to adapt to changing constraints and to react to unexpected events than using a global planning strategy.