Production Planning And Control In Distributed And Networked Open Production Sites – An Integrative Literature Review

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has once again drastically highlighted the trend and need towards urban and distributed production in cities (so-called Fab Cities) and their importance for society in order to independently meet the demand for physical goods. For small but highly individualized products, the manufacturing process is now possible in distributed and open production sites (so called FabLabs) equipped with digital manufacturing machines. These places empower individuals, start-ups, SMEs or companies to innovate, produce and educate. However, many open production sites are operated independently of each other, reducing resource efficiency, capacity utilization and competitiveness. This strives against the trend of physical and digital networking, which the manufacturing industry has long since completed in order to use its capacities more efficiently. In this paper, an integrative literature review is used to hypothesize and verify that such production planning and control (PPC) for open, distributed and bottom-up controlled production networks has not yet been scientifically researched. As a result of the review, it appears that today's production can be divided into three main types. The first main type represents the closed factory with its own PPC. The second main type represents globally connected and distributed value networks (e.g., Industry 4.0, cloud manufacturing) that are controlled top-down. The third and largely unexplored main type consists of open, bottom-up controlled as well as locally distributed but globally connected open production sites. To increase the future competitiveness and resilience of a sustainable Fab City, the authors show that further research is needed on the controlling and governance of open and urban production sites which the authors present in a research agenda.