Dynamics in Logistics

Principles of design, development and evolution of distributed systems in several disparate domains are reviewed in this paper with the objective of shedding new light on control design in the domain of logistic systems for production, transportation, etc. The spectrum of available organizational structures is reviewed and the case is made for choosing heterarchical structures. Then, principles for designing control systems and building and evolving organizations with heterarchical structures are reviewed. Finally, the design of web services is reviewed, providing another set of principles that are expected to be useful for designing heterarchical controls for dynamic logistic systems.

In June 2003, Wal-Mart asked its top 100 suppliers to begin using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on pallets and cases beginning January 2005. Since that announcement, the business value of RFID in the consumer packaged goods supply chain has been periodically questioned.Recently, a Wall Street Journal article asserted that RFID is not living up to its hype, and in reality is not providing the promised tangible business value throughout the supply chain. In light of such claims, this paper examines the business value of RFID in the supply chain and presents a model of RFID assimilation which proposes that the creation of business value is dependent upon the depth of assimilation (extent of use). The model is grounded in industry observations of the difficulty of early adopters to fully realize the benefits of RFID assimilation. The model conceptualizes RFID assimilation as occurring in three waves: the first wave of the model is Technology Deployment, the next wave of Data Understanding, and, lastly, the final wave is Business Value Creation. In this paper, the first two waves of the model are explored briefly with the emphasis placed on proven business cases and potential opportunities for RFID to provide business value in the supply chain.

This paper is a state of the art review of trends, theories and practices in production and logistic networks and the evaluation of supply chains. The paper outlines the progression of concepts from supply chains to the definition of production networks, summarises the trends for virtual companies and outlines recent research in logistics. The use of competence profiling is reviewed for selecting companies for a network, on the basis of core competencies. New methodologies for performance assessment of production networks are also reviewed, together with well established benchmarks arising from the lean and agile methodologies.

Supply Chain Management relies heavily on forecasts, e.g. of future demand or future prices. Most applications, however, use static forecasting models in the sense that past data is used for model construction and evaluation without being updated adequately when new data becomes available.We propose a dynamic forecasting methodology and show its effectiveness in a real-world application.

This study proposes a design approach for self-organization-based systems by introducing bounded-rational agents. The validity of the proposed model of bounded rationality is validated in comparison to the proposal of information localization, using a simulation of self-organization-based semiconductor manufacturing, which is a typical complex system. The effectiveness of the proposal is demonstrated also under changing situations.

Concurrent operation of multiple automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in a limited space such as a container terminal results in a high probability of occurrences of collisions, deadlocks, and livelocks; all these occurrences decrease the productivity of the AGVs. Therefore, it is important to assign a route to each AGV in a manner that prevents these occurrences. Moreover, the accelerated motion of an AGV makes routing more difficult. In this paper, we propose a method of avoiding collisions, deadlocks, and livelocks using an occupancy area reservation (OAR) table. We also propose a method to estimate the travel time of an AGV with accelerated motion in order to select the most efficient AGV route. The experimental results indicate that our proposed method is effective in increasing the productivity of AGVs when they are operated in a limited space such as a container terminal.

This paper gives an integrated view on two important issues in freight transportation. One is the pickup and delivery problem, the other is the resource allocation problem. In the pickup and delivery problem, re-usable resources are transported by trucks between locations. Additionally, these charge carriers have to be balanced in the transportation network on a rolling planning horizon. We introduce a mathematical formulation of this problem integrating routing and allocation. In a dynamic environment, integration strategies come along with advantages and disadvantages. We discuss these strategies and issues of their application.

Applications, restrictions to drivers’working hours have only received very little attention in the vehicle routing literature. In this paper we consider a rich dynamic vehicle routing problem in which transportation requests arrive dynamically and the new EU drivers’ working hour regulations, that entered into force in April 2007, must be considered.We present two algorithms for solving the problem under investigation and perform computational experiments that clearly indicate that regulations concerning drivers’ working hours can have a significant impact on the performance of algorithms which are competitive when drivers’ working hours are not considered.

The aim of this paper is to assess the readiness of UK logistics companies to adopt RFID technology, trying to understand whether, and when, it will be adopted in large scale. The first barrier to a new technologies adoption is awareness – are the potential users aware of the new technology and its potential benefits? Once potential users are aware of a new technology more practical and economic questions come to the fore – difficulty of implementation, availability, standards, cost, privacy, compatibility with existing business processes, etc. The paper investigates these issues and contrasts them against the interesting features and achieved benefits of RFID. A model of RFID diffusion is presented which shows that a high level of awareness (81%) is not yet matched by adoption (17%). However, diffusion has just overtaken the inflection point of the S-shaped curve that models the diffusion of an innovation, and is now approaching the stage in which the adoption rate is rapidly increasing. Adoption is being led by large companies. Cost, lack of practical knowledge about application, difficulty of demonstrating ROI and difficulty of attaching tags were the major barriers to adoption, followed by technological issues (integration, reliability, lack of standards). To sum up, in supply chain management, it is likely that UHF passive tags will be the most commonly used, and that pallets, cases and carton tagging, rather than item tagging, will be the most popular application of RFID technology. Moreover, it is predicted that, in the early phase, big companies will adopt it, paving the way to wider diffusion once return on investment is demonstrated, best practices developed and costs fall.

Improvement of logistics system in production networks can produce a significant advantage for the companies involved. The paper investigates application of modern technologies such as RFID and configuration/optimization possibilities via an example of dynamic transportation problem. The general methodology based on ontology-driven knowledge description is described. It is explained how RFID technology can improve the logistics system and shown that in case of dynamic environment it is preferable to use fast algorithms producing feasible decisions instead of time-consuming optimisation.

The purpose of this paper is to address the problems presented by a heterogeneous environment of networked RFID implementations. These systems have a growing number of applications and these will have varying requirements that need to be modelled and communicated. The use of an ontology-centred methodology is suggested that can represent the entities in the system and also their relationships in a formalized manner. Such a formal methodology can support the planning, design, development, efficient operation and interconnection of various networked architectures.

This paper shows how to compute optimal control policies for a certain class of supply networks via a combination of stochastic dynamic programming and parametric programming.We consider supply networks where the dynamics of the material and information flows within the entire network can be expressed by a system of first-order difference equations and where some inputs to the system act as external disturbances. Assuming piecewise linear costs on state and control inputs, optimal control policies are computed for a risk-neutral objective function using the expected cost and for a risk-averse objective function using the worst-case cost. The obtained closed-loop control policies are piecewise-affine and continuous functions of the state variables, representing as a generalization of the common order-up-to policies. The optimal value functions are piecewise affine and convex, which is the essential structural property to allow for the solution via a sequence of parametric linear programs. Some numerical results are given on an example network with two suppliers with different costs and lead times.

We applied an adaptive controller to the general model of a replenishment rule. The replenishment rule is the “automatic pipeline, variable inventory and order based production control system”. In the current literature the possibility to reduce the bullwhip effect and demand fluctuations by setting the right smoothing parameters to this replenishment rule was shown for independently and identically distributed stationary stochastic demand. In the real world the demand uncertainties are changing (e.g. along the product life cycle). On this account we developed a gain scheduling adaptive control mechanism, which is able to adjust the parameter based on states of the system and demand uncertainties. With the adaptive controller the system can be adapted to uncertainties in demand by holding the production fluctuations stable and adjust smoothly to a new appropriate inventory coverage level by setting the right inventory adjustment parameter, the right target inventory level and the right forecast time.

The collaborative networks (CN) must be configured according to the project goals and reconfigured in dynamics according to the current execution environment. In practice, CN design decisions are rarely focused on “green Field” situation. More typically questions are centred on adaptation and rationalizing the CN in response to permanent changes of CN itself and its environment. That is why we consider the problem of business continuity supporting and continuous adjustment of collaborative networks in accordance with permanent changes of project execution environment as a critical point in the CN research. Subject of this contribution is to elaborate a methodological basis of the CN adaptation. In the CN, adaptation challenges are caused by self-interested competitive behavior of participated enterprises, unpredictable execution environment, structure dynamics structure dynamics of both CN itself and of the supporting infrastructures like information processes. To answer these challenges, we introduce the framework of CN adaptive control to increase the quality of decision-making about the CN reconfiguration and adjustment based on planning under the terms of uncertainty, execution under the terms of adaptation, and reflections of planning and execution phases of the CN control on the adaptation principles. We illustrate the methodological framework on an analytical example, which matches the stability and robustness analysis in the planning phase with the CN adaptation in the execution phase based on a systematic approach to derive the adaptation measures according to different deviations. First, the multi-stage adaptation concept is presented. We draw the conclusion that the CN robustness must be considered in connection to the stability analysis and CN adaptation.We show that particularly the user-controlled adaptation plays the key role in supply chains to achieve or to hold the stable or rather robust state. To amplify this idea, the CN adaptation and stability/robustness analysis are considered interrelated to each other.We finish this section with a short numerical example. The article is concluded with a summary of the achieved results and prospects for future developments. The practical applicability of the presented results can be seen in elaborating a comprehensive approach to decision making in complex value-adding partnerships, which allows generating stable plans and guidelines for operative CN adjustment.

The intrinsically unstable dynamics of production networks is a serious economic danger not only for small companies. For example, fluctuations of processing times cause an irregular behaviourwhich can lead to production breakdowns due to a lack of material or time intervals with an intermittent accumulation of material or unprocessed orders. However, event-discrete simulations indicate that such fluctuations may also have a constructive effect on the dynamics: If a push strategy is applied for the production process, long down times of the machines after each processed workpiece may lead to a successive increase of certain stocks, which is decelerated in the presence of fluctuating processing times. In the more realistic case of a pull control, improper lot sizes result in an aperiodic behaviour even for constant processing times. The critical parameters associated with the different effects are identified and further evaluated for linear supply chains and symmetrically interacting manufacturers.

Multi-agent Systems are a promising approach to implement flexible and effective decentralized control mechanismen for the logistic domain. This paper intends to introduce the key features of a multi-agent system that is under development for several years. The agents autonomously plan, optimize, and control a railway transportation system. For this purpose the agents interact, communicate and negotiate. This paper presents an overview how different techniques from operations research, artificial intelligence and soft computing are integrated into a multi-agent system to solve this difficult and complex real life problem.

In this paper, we investigate the following problem: k mobile agents are placed on a graph G. Each agent performs a random walk, and when two or more agents meet at a node, they merge into a single agent. We present a Markov chain modeling the agents behaviour and show how this can be used to upper bound the expected time for all the k agents to merge into a single agent.

Autonomous logistic processes aim at coping with logistic dynamics and complexity by local decision making to gain flexibility and robustness. This paper discusses resource-bounded logistics decision making using software agents and task decomposition. Simulations show the feasibility of dynamic vehicle routing and quality monitoring on embedded systems for the transport of perishable goods.

Today we see a rapid shift of traditional supply chains towards internetdriven supply networks. Radio frequency (RF) based technologies such as RFID and RF based sensors will support this change by combining the physical and virtual world.While the cost for RF infrastructure faces a substantial decrease, the cost of providing and updating product and supply chain relevant data will increase as a consequence of the growing need for information. In many cases the positive contribution of RF based information to this dynamic change will be hindered because of doubtful return on investment (ROI) in internet-driven supply networks. Based on three scenarios, the paper will show a new concept of billable RF based information, which may be integrated into the concept of the “Internet-of-Things” as it is known today.

We present a discrete event simulation model reproducing the adoption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for the optimal management of common logistics processes of a Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) warehouse. In this study, simulation is exploited as a powerful tool to reproduce both the reengineered RFID logistics processes and the flows of Electronic Product Code (EPC) data generated by such processes. Due to the newness of RFID adoption in the logistics context and to the lack of real case applications that can be examined, we believe that the model developed can be very useful both to understand the practical implications of the technology applied in such field, and to provide a “proof of concept” to substantiate the adoption of RFID in the FMCG industry. Moreover, through the simulation tool, we also address the issue of how the flows of EPC data (Matrix) generated by RFID technology can be exploited to provide value-added information for optimally managing the logistics processes.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can be used to significantly improve the efficiency of business processes by providing the capability of automatic identification and data capture. RFID system must implement functions to posses the enormous event data generated quickly by RFID readers. The proliferation of RFID tags and readers will require dedicated middleware solutions that manage readers and process event data. In this paper, we describe our middleware (called LIT Middleware) architecture with key features and also illustrate overall functional components of the middleware software as well as the system framework. Our component based middleware architecture provides extensibility, scalability and abstraction, and is also compatible with EPCglobal standards.

Information about current quality state enables large improvements in the dynamic planning for the logistics of fresh products. The main reason for quality losses are temperature deviations. This article investigates how a prediction system that delivers a shelf life prediction at each transhipment point could be integrated into a semi-passive RFID label. Limiting factors for the possible predictions accuracy like model tolerances and the bound processing resources of low-power microcontrollers will be evaluated.

This paper intends to show possible contributions of the concept of autonomous cooperation (AC) to enable logistics management of International Supply Networks (ISN) to improve dealing with external dynamics caused by environmental complexity and dynamics. The concept of AC as one possible approach to cope with external dynamics of ISN will be analysed either from a theoretical and an empirical point of view.

The industry has undergone significant changes in recent decades. Today, it is no longer home-based and operates in a global market. The integration of demand and supply has widened the strategic relevance of logistic networks, processes and systems. This integration along global supply chains depends on trustful partnership, international and hence cross-cultural cooperation. The design, plan and management of logistics are particularly complex because of the diversity of contexts, organisations and individuals involved. Therefore, suitable long-term learning process should taken into account agents’ role and background, the context in which it takes place as well as intra- and inter-organisational culture. In fact, enhancing competitive advantage on the basis of both overlap and diversity of knowledge is an important capability within today’s supply chains. On this foundation, the present paper aims to address business scenario and logistic systems from a viewpoint that approaches competitive advantage in terms of sustainability and effectiveness. Some aspects impacting on dynamics in logistics will be circumscribed in agreement with a holistic perspective embracing context, organisation and individual levels. A descriptive model and further steps toward an approach based on a long-term learning process will be then introduced.

Intelligent logistic objects with the ability of autonomous control are a possibility to face new challenges in dynamic logistic systems. On the other hand autonomy of logistic entities poses new questions to the underlying logistic system. In this paper we will focus on the possibilities of reducing the objective and subjective drawbacks of autonomy in logistics by an autonomous risk management for the logistic entity. A technical solution based on intelligent agent technology will be presented.

Product differentiation in transport and logistics mainly can be realized by quality improvements of related services. In this context, amongst others, demands for intermodal solutions arise due to organisational and infra-structural induced bottlenecks in mobility. Therefore knowledge management approaches rank among the best design options of a modern and innovative management in these companies. This is also emphasized by results of the initiative “Fit for the knowledge competition” of the German Ministry of Economics and Technology. Using intermodal logistics networks as an example, in this paper it will be demonstrated and outlined on how knowledge management yield benefits, and which trends can be expected in line with the application of knowledge management tools in this dynamically characterized decision environment.

In a food supply chain, companies exchange information and products to create value. The competitive advantage of the company relies on that of the entire chain. This paper addresses knowledge management in a food supply chain especially the promotion of knowledge sharing and transfer. This is a substantial issue when, for example, a company comes to leave the supply chain voluntarily or disappears because of natural or man-made catastrophes. In this case, the question remains whether the substituting organization can acquire the tacit knowledge needed to fulfill its mission. Consequently, the operation of the supply chain becomes an acute issue too. The paper proposes a methodology based on organizational and interorganizational learning and develops a learning laboratory that facilitates knowledge sharing and transfer. This lab supports (a) knowledge sharing through the mental map’s knowledge elicitation of every company’s leader, and (b) knowledge transfer via dedicated learning-based environments.

Manufacturing companies today are cutting operational costs considerably in Europe. Many globally operating companies have moved their production to lower labour cost countries, like China or India. However, some companies have decided to stay in Europe, but they then must focus on cost reduction. One solution for decreasing operational costs is outsourcing. This paper is a case example from the Finnish manufacturing industry, where a small sized manufacturing company decided to focus on its core competencies. Core competencies were product development and production, but not the logistics process. The case company decided to outsource its logistics process. The challenge being, where to find a small sized logistics service provider that would be interested in the needs of the case company? The case company’s requirements for services included in-bound, in-house and outbound logistics. In our project, the other case company was the service provider. This paper describes the service provider’s service offerings development process. During that project, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, was with the aid of the service provider, developing new logistics service offerings for industry needs.

This paper introduces various planning activities in container terminals. And their functions, planning horizons, and required resources are described. This paper also proposes a new framework for various planning activities in container terminals. The new framework considers capacities of various resources related to each planning activity, simultaneously. The resources include not only the storage space but also the handling equipment. For considering the handling capacity explicitly, a concept of the resource profile for each planning activity is proposed. It is shown how the resource profile can be utilized for checking the feasibility of an operational plan in container terminals.

New security requirements for international container trade are forcing changes in global supply chain processes. Simultaneously, shippers look to advanced technology to enhance security and efficiency of their container logistics. Customs inspections at international borders, especially in maritime ports, are one of the biggest inefficiency factors, leading to delays and additional logistics costs. An electronic seal as an important part of a multi-layered security system has the ability to enhance the security as well as to improve the efficiency of container logistics. The paper is focused on the problem of reducing customs inspections variation at the ports, and evaluating investments in electronic seals. As a number of world security initiatives require implementing electronic seals on containers, the paper tries to measure the influence of different types of eSeals on the performance of container logistics and with special consideration of customs inspections in the ports.

Shipping containers handle most of today’s intercontinental transport of packaged goods.Managing them in terms of planning and scheduling is a challenging task due to the complexity and dynamics of the involved processes. Hence, recent developments show an increasing trend towards autonomous control with software agents acting on behalf of the logistic objects. Despite of the high degree of autonomy it is still necessary to cooperate in order to achieve certain goals. This paper argues in favour of conceptual, spatial, and temporal properties on which shipping containers can form groups in order to jointly achieve certain goals. A distributed clustering method based on concept, location, and time is introduced. Subsequently, a case study demonstrates its applicability to a problem in the shipping container domain.

Most of the actual sea freight is transported in ISO standard containers today. The number of containers shipped per year has been increasing continuously over the last years and is expected to further grow, see e.g. [1]. Dealing with these increasing numbers and the data generated along their way is a great challenge for today’s logistic and IT systems. We believe that these problems can best be faced through encapsulation and decentralization. Our goal is to increase the automation within the port by using emerging technologies to enable a distributed container handling approach with proactive containers. These smart containers monitor their environment, provide status information and interact with others. All these capabilities should be used to control the process flow of the container’s handling. Our research vision is focussed on the port. We are aware that additional requirements arise, for example from supply chain event monitoring, but nevertheless believe this to be an acceptable constraint. We assume a smart container that is capable of wirelessly registering itself, when entering the port. The further processing of the container can then be controlled by the container itself through its state. The container would know its contents (pack list) along with its routing. Additionally the container would be equipped with sensors to monitor its interior and exterior environment, and change its state proactively. Technologically we want to use the ZigBee and LEACH routing protocol to build up the network and develop a software platform as a service-oriented architecture based on the UPC UA Architecture and using OSGi as the framework.

Logistics has to deal with dynamics and uncertainties. In order to cope with such problems we introduce a communication-based approach built on distributed autonomous systems. In this work graph transformation with autonomous units is used as a rule-based instantiation of multi-agent systems to model logistic systems. The approachwill be presented using a scenario taken from transport logistics. Here loads which have to be transported are queued in order of their arrival but scheduled for further transportation according to their own constraints. In the paper we propose a negotiation between loads and the respective truck based on payment of transportation rates.

We consider a deployment problem from transportation logistics that requires a repeated update of an existing transportation plan. The system load varies significantly and unpredictable over time. In order to consider modifications of the decision premises we propose to adjust reactively the used decision model for a transport planning problem. Since the transportation plan update instances are represented in terms of an optimization problem we try to adapt the objective function as well as the constraint set in order to inject up-to-date problem knowledge into the formal problem representation. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive report and comparison about the numerical results observed in simulation experiments and describe the different impacts of adapting the objective function and the constraint set of the model.

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.

In this paper we consider stability of logistic networks.We give a stability criterion for a general situation and show how it can be applied in special cases. For this purpose two examples are considered.

Recent business environments of keen competition require companies to communicate frequently with each other. This makes a company deal with more complex processes. Business Process Management (BPM) system plays an important role for the management of such complex processes. Recently, it moves their focus onto multi-organizational collaboration, and a platform independent architecture for the communication is required. Web services are platform-independent and service-oriented architectures for easy communication among heterogeneous systems. In this paper, we propose a new method of integrating BPM and web services to manage multi-organizational processes. A standard, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) plays a key role in our approach. We consider several scenarios for integrating web service and BPM using the BPEL when a company performs a complex process with other partners. We also provide technical issues of the integrated system. A BPM system is implemented to present the result of our research. Our approach enables each business partner to carry out business collaboration seamlessly.

Due to a global competition today’s business world changed dramatically whereas the ongoing trend towards global enterprise networks has lead to increasing customer expectations regarding the performance of logistics systems which have to be simultaneously reliable, robust and cost-effective. One the one hand reliability, robustness and cost-efficiency mainly depend on the availability of suitable ICTsolutions as well as their proper integration into the business processes. As a consequence various systems were developed in the past and are currently in use. On the other hand the seamless access to the data kept by all these different systems is a key issue in order to meet the requirements of logistics systems of today and tomorrow. In this context data integration represents a major challenge which is still unsolved. This paper describes a proposal for a service-oriented approach towards the seamless integration of logistics data which aims at combining existing systems and standards and thus overcoming today’s data and information barriers. By accepting existing standards and interfaces this requires innovative approaches addressing the semantic description of data, their transparent transformation between different representations as well as a common interface which can be provided to the various systems which are currently applied in the field of logistics.

Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM) is an emerging topic in both business practice and academia. It receives increasing attention as more companies implement SCEM-systems. However, despite its practical relevance, no general definition of SCEM exists in literature or within companies until today. Also, so far SCEM has not been operationalized for quantitative studies. Thus, the goal of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of SCEM by defining a measurement instrument to measure the level of SCEM-adoption in companies. This has been approached on the one hand by pursuing a literature review of both practitioners and academic literature and on the other hand by conducting case studies in companies using SCEM-systems. First, a common definition of SCEM is generated from a combination of findings from literature and expert interviews, and second, a measurement instrument for SCEM-adoption is developed. Implications include advice on how to test the SCEM-adoption measurement instrument statistically in order to asses its ability to measure SCEM-adoption with high validity.

Bremen, Federal State of Germany, is planning to set up a headquarter for GMES - Global Monitoring of Environment and Security. One goal of the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics (ISL) is to develop services for GMES to improve the security in intermodal container transport with emphasis on the maritime sector. ISL is developing a Security Event Management System which takes care of all security related events in the intermodal chain. The security system registers the schedule and transport information of a container and assigns a corridor for its transport. During the transport the system receives events which will be used for computing a security risk factor for each container, by considering restrictions like position with respect to the assigned corridor, duration of standstill and others. According to the value of the security risk factor the user will be informed using web services, EDI or email.

This paper focuses on the application of a bee-like autonomous control method to a matrix-like shop floor model with setup times. Autonomous control means decentralized coordination of intelligent logistic objects in a dynamically changing environment. By the aid of a continuous flow simulation the system’s performance will be analyzed in regard to the application effect on throughput times and inventory levels.

The process algebra CSP provides a well-established formalism for the modelling, analysis, and verification of concurrent systems. Besides being a specification language, CSP provides a valuable set of proof principles.We show in tutorial style, how these proof principles are made available in our tool CSP-Prover. Overall, CSP-Prover turns out to be an off-the-shelf proof tool ready for use in applications.

The activity of logistical systems occurs often under uncertainty (demand fluctuation, irregularity of transport units movement, unreliable equipment, etc.). Therefore, it is naturally to apply for their modeling different types of stochastic processes, in particular the Markov drift processes (with continuous sample paths). The phase space of Markov drift processes is direct product

D×C

, where

D

is a finite or denumerable set,

C

is a continuous set,

C

⊆

R

n

+

. In our paper, a number of examples of Markov drift processes application to modeling the different kinds of logistical systems (production lines, transportation systems, supply chains, etc.) is given.

A paradigm change in the control logic of material flows is propagated towards self-controlled objects that take decisions decentrally as a reaction to cope with the increasing complexity. However, the technical feasibility has yet to be proven, esp. with regard to in-house material handling. For a successful implementation in future planning rules, the overall system performance as well as adapted system hardware is to be investigated. The paper focuses onto part-to-picker orderpicking systems (OPS) with the use of AS/RS, which are typically operated by a central control system. The challenge for decentral control concepts is the formulation of optimal control strategies without information of the current system status. By means of a reference model and simulations runs KPIs and various operating strategies are compared between the two different control philosophies. The analyses yield that decentral control strategies are suitable for the operation of partto- picker OPS, where they control bin supply to a series of order picking stations that even operate according to the inverse picking principle, i.e. parallel picking at the order picking stations. By means of adapted operating strategies a comparable system performance, measured in picks/hr or picker utilization, can be achieved.