From MRP Nervousness to Shop Floor Schedule Nervousness in the Industry 4.0 Era

Abstract

In the context of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), manufacturing systems are shifting from nonflexible to dynamic, self-aware and self-adaptable ones. Thus, scheduling systems, as a core of production functionality, are turning online, context-aware and responsive. Nevertheless, even when immediate responsive actions are performed when facing disruptions, aimed at getting a new feasible and/or good quality solution, this adaptation-to-change response mechanism might not be well accepted on the shop floor. This is mainly because, repeated changes could lead to a continuous rearrange of predefined manufacturing plans, through different levels, from MRP to the control systems. Traditionally, this behavior is known as schedule nervousness, which triggers unnecessary material movements, delays, reassignments, customers’ dissatisfaction, etc. There are many contributions about nervousness at the different planning levels, as well as recent advances seizing that issue at control level. Yet, further specification of the nervousness happening at the shop-floor level (Shop-Floor Schedule Nervousness, SFSN), where a short-term on-going schedule drives the production, is actually required. In this work, the schedule nervousness notion is introduced briefly from a historical perspective, also, a description in relation to the I4.0 context, and a novel notion of the SFSN, are shortly introduced.