From plant and logistics control to multi-enterprise collaboration

Current and emerging manufacturing and logistics systems are posing new challenges and opportunities for the automation and control community. This milestone report describes the main problems, such as management of complexity, scalability, increasing costs, coordination, market-based resource allocation, and more. Recent accomplishments and trends are discussed: control and automation techniques, manufacturing plant automation, collaborative control through integration and networking, and control methods applied to extended enterprises and large-scale critical infrastructure. Finally, forecasts are presented for the next generation manufacturing system; e-work; integration, coordination and collaboration; networked, distributed decision support (NDSS); and active middleware. (C) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.