Intelligent Manufacturing Management

Abstract

Manufacturing Management (MM) is as old as manufacturing is. The main problems have stayed the same, some new problems have emerged, particularly during the last decades, with growing complexity and dynamics and new tools and approaches have emerged due to new and advanced technologies, particularly in information processing. It will be useful to look at the different areas of MM on the strategic, tactical and operational level. These levels are here understood as well in terms of range and scope (importance) of decisions as in terms of the time span that they include. Depending on the context the scales can, of course, be very different. Strategic decisions can, for instance, cover a period of many decades, depending on the type of industry and the type of decision. They might, however, also only reach a few years into the future. Planning decisions may consider years, but also focus on shorter horizons of month and operational decisions may cover month but also go down to (immediate or continuous) online control. On the strategic level of MM one will generally find decisions concerning basic technologies to be used, physical capacities, lay-outs etc. These can, of course, already concern the type of production technology (flow shop, job shop, group technology, flexible manufacturing systems, etc) but also the physical production logistic system or the type of storage facilities.