Levels of Autonomy in Production Logistics: Terminology and Framework

Abstract

The increasing demand of flexibility in production systems influences the organisation of production logistics and enhances the role of autonomous resources for logistic tasks. In the current state of the art, there exists neither a common definition of the term “autonomy” in the production logistics context nor a generalised approach regarding the classification of autonomous resources depending on their characteristics as well as their skills. Due to this lack, difficulties appear when intending to integrate autonomous resources - that are implemented for logistic tasks - in the superior production control processes which aim to meet the key performance indicators of the production system. This paper analyses in a first step the current use of terminology regarding autonomy and related terms like automation and self-x approaches in production logistics. Based on these results, a definition of “autonomy” for production logistics and a universal framework for classifying autonomous resources regarding their level of autonomy can be proposed. This allows to specify afterwards the appropriate level of autonomy in production logistics for a specific production system.