Autonomous production control: a literature review

Abstract

Autonomous production control (APC) aims at improving production systems performance through fast and flexible reaction to changes in dynamic production environments. APC shifts the power of decision from a central planning unit, towards single intelligent and distributed logistic objects that can cope with the rising complexity of today’s manufacturing systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the current state of art on APC in discrete manufacturing industries, throughout a systematic literature review. The study’s objectives were to: (1) identify specialists in APC; and (2) identify theoretical developments and practical implementations. The reviewed was obtained by searching the Scopus database - a total of 49 papers have been analysed. The findings revealed that there is not much work carried out on APC until now, and that most of the contributions are theoretical. It is hoped that this literature review will contribute to enhance research in this science field.