The series production of piece goods with many variants is traditionally characterized by a fixed allocation of known customer orders and production orders generated within the production planning. Non-predictable process disorders (such as unreliable suppliers, short-term delivery date changes by customers, high market dynamics, machine breakdowns and quality problems) require a rapid reaction of production control in order to achieve the logistics targets.
The fixed allocation of customer orders and production orders restricts the ability to adapt to the changed environment. The opportunity to increase the response capacity lies in the use of the existing , but so far not used, flexibility potential within the system. Previous research justify the methods of autonomous control in order to develop these potentials.

The goal of this subproject is the systematic development and application of so far unused flexibility potentials by generating a new autonomous control method. An important potential is available by using a loose and situational allocation of product variants and customer orders instead of having fixed allocations. By implementing a method for an autonomous product construction cycle a part can autonomously decide, based on present orders and possible product variants, which product will be produced and which customer order will be served.

• creation of criteria for determining the potential flexibility and degrees of freedom in production systems
  
• development of a method for generating a product variant corridor (from product structure and production process view)
  
• development of an autonomous control method for assessing the product variant corridor alternatives based on technological and logistical criteria
  
  Results Phase 2 (2008-2011)
  
  

  Main focus of the work was to open up the system inherent flexibility and to gain the true potential of logistics through the use of autonomous parts during the production process. For this purpose, were first identified the relevant flexibility potentials for autonomous control and the methodological preconditions for an autonomous product completion cycle. Based on that, a method was developed for generating decision alternatives (the so-called product variant corridor) and a autonomous control method for decision making.