Holonic Logistic Execution System

[Pieter Vansteenwegen]

For Jan Van Belle:

In general, a Logistic Execution System (LES) is responsible for the
management of transport and logistic operations in real time. This management
includes tracking and tracing, monitoring and coordination and control
among others and has to be performed in a very dynamic environment. This
can be a consequence of internal (e.g. a broken-down truck) as well as external
factors (e.g. delays caused by traffic jams). In addition, since there is
a tough competition in the transport and logistic sector, companies have to
be very flexible.
For several years now, researchers of the Department of Mechanical Engineering
at K.U. Leuven are working on a Manufacturing Execution System
(MES). They use a holonic, self-organizing and decentralized approach to
handle the internal logistics in a manufacturing system. This Holonic MES
or HMES tries to improve the responsiveness, proactiveness, scalability and
flexibility of the system and handles changes and disturbances as businessas-
usual. These properties are also of high interest in a logistic environment.
Therefore, the general idea of this PhD is to develop a Holonic Logistic
Execution System (HLES) by applying the concepts and principles used in
the Holonic MES to transport and logistics. There are however two main
differences between the two applications that have to be considered to fit
the new one. First of all, in a Holonic LES support for mobile equipment
is required. Trucks and trains can move and have no fixed position like
production machines. Also, they can be loaded or unloaded at different
positions. Secondly, the mobile equipment has to be shared between different
orders. Trucks, boats and trains have to cooperate with the intelligent
products, that manage their own transport, to make sure that they are sufficiently
loaded. This cooperation needs to be dynamic and is very important
because it determines the quality of the resulting control actions.
The challenges and obstacles encountered during this work will determine
how the research will proceed. Possible challenges are the uncertainty in
transport systems, multi-modal transport, interaction with traffic, multiresource
allocation, interaction between the MES and LES, . . . .