Autonomous product manufacturing cycle - an integrated approach to process planning and production control

The complexity of nowadays logistics processes calls for new approaches to improve the logistics performance. The concept of autonomous logistics processes has proven to be a promising way to cope with these challenges. In this paper the idea of autonomous product manufacturing will be presented with a special focus on an integrated approach to process planning and production control. In particular we introduce a new way to let products decide by themselves what to become and how. Based on current findings in flexible and reconfigurable process planning, a framework for autonomous production will be presented. Following a critical discussion of the contributions and limitations of the proposed approach further research will be addressed.