Hierarchical and centralized architectures for distributed production planning, scheduling and control activities

This work reviews some of the basic ideas behind centralized and hierarchical architecture, especially focusing on internal logistics activities. It also bring initial thoughts for a methodology to help select (or design) control architecture for distributed production planning, scheduling and control. This methodology would focus on two main aspects: (1) a response-time based approach to be used as the input to measure the effect of different CAs in the system performance, and (2) an activity-based approach for the creation of simulation and control models.