Clustering in Autonomous Cooperating Logistic Processes

Due to the growing complexity of logistic processes, “Autonomous Cooperating Logistic Processes” are considered as a way to handle this complexity growth (Scholz-Reiter et al. 2004). In this concept, knowledge and decisions are distributed among the participants of the logistic process. Vehicles and goods become intelligent, interactive, and capable of deciding about how to achieve their aims. Logistic components may have common aims, e.g., several goods that are at the same location and have the same destination. In such a case, it can be sensible to form communities of those components and determine a community leader that acts on behalf of all members. It is expected that thereby, the required communication among the logistic components can be optimized. This paper identifies challenges in the area of communication that arise from the distributed decision process and the interacting components. An approach to form clusters among the goods is proposed to address these challenges.