Cross-Company Routing Planning: Determining Value Chains in a Dynamic Production Network Through a Decentralized Approach

Abstract

Demand-based, local production will gain relevance in the context of sustainability and circular economy. One way to implement local value creation is through establishing highly dynamic networks that consolidate the competencies of regional manufacturers. Consequently, the structure of the value chains needs to be determined ad hoc dependent on demand. This is a rather challenging task due to the dynamics within such networks and the flat hierarchies. Traditionally, value chains are defined and controlled in a centralized form by a lead firm or a separate stakeholder (e.g. Intermediary, Broker). However, to accommodate the dynamics of demand and the increasing complexity of products, we propose a decentralized form of coordination. The basic idea is to upscale Routing Planning, used in Process Planning, to a network level. Meaning instead of a centralized instance within a company defining the production steps, the stakeholders will collaboratively determine the cross-company Routing Plan, effectively building the value chain. Thus, the accumulated experience and knowledge of all stakeholders can be utilized to efficiently fulfil current customer demand, since the value chain will be executed by the same stakeholders that created it. But in order to coordinate the sequencing of operations by multiple stakeholders, suitable methods need to be implemented. We look at a strategy to facilitate such a collaboration between companies and demonstrate one possible technical implementation based on AI planning using Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL).