Introductory Concepts

According to the German i4.0 action group, cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) will open new possibilities to integrate manufacturing shopfloor with external supply chains. Nevertheless, also CPPS are still based on traditional batch and queue (B&Q) systems, and a CPPS-suitable performant manufacturing mode is still missing because not yet defined. Before entering straight forward into the core of the topic, one must understand not only the "physics" regarding performance of manufacturing systems to achieve on-time delivery (OTD) but also the real intrinsic characteristics of existing different manufacturing systems and the related advantages and issues.