Autor: Lennart Steinbacher

Intense global competition, shorter product life cycles and an increasing number of variants require flexible and adaptable, but at the same time economical production and logistics systems. This requires constant replanning of factories and logistics systems. Value-adding processes are being outsourced to contract logistics providers. Contract logistics planners must respond to tenders as quickly as possible and develop a proposal with an initial planning concept and a cost estimation. Despite standardization efforts in planning, the knowledge is often only implicit at the planners. This article describes the need for support by an AI-based assistance system during the planning process and how a digital platform for such an assistance system should look like.

The food production process and raw material specific parameters significantly influence the quality of the final product. Furthermore, for products with several ingredients, complex parameter effects occur. This complexity causes the desire for a production control that considers these effects and orientates on final product quality. This article describes the state of the art and derives requirements form a case study in a delicatessen food production system. In summary, this paper presents a concept for production control with special consideration of the final product quality for the production of delicatessen salads.

The progressive digitization of the working environment requires an infrastructure in production and logistics companies. In addition to establishing communication networks, a digitized infrastructure can itself be used as the subject of intelligent behaviour. Using the example of intelligent lighting control in port logistics, this article provides an overview of the potentials and hurdles that exist. First, it be examines how infrastructures in ports are structured and which technical solutions exist to implement intelligent control methods. Thereafter, it shows the potential arising from such intelligent lighting control, example given up to 35 % saving of energy costs allocated to electricity, and what hurdles must be overcome beforehand.