Internet of Things-based real-time production logistics synchronization mechanism and method toward customer order dynamics

The reluctance or incapability of further increasing production resources has made many enterprises suffering from high resource-workload situation. Production dynamics thus cannot be resolved by single resource independently, yet have to make an integral use of the adjustable capability of multiple resources of the whole system in a synchronized way. This paper considers a dynamic production logistics (PL) process comprising multiple independently operated PL stages, which adopts Internet of Things to capture real-time execution dynamics and rely on plan (re)scheduling and cloud-based resources re-configuration to cope with dynamics. A generic dynamic production logistics synchronization (PLS) solution is proposed. Qualitatively, a multi-phase multi-stage multi-degree synchronization control mechanism is put forward toward a PL system with generic structure and typical execution dynamics. Quantitatively, collaborative optimization is applied to assist the PLS to obtain the synchronization results. With a real-life case study, the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism and method has been verified. A set of sensitivity analysis is also conducted toward dynamics of different degree and different time, which provides significant managerial implication to PL managers to better deal with dynamics.