Cooperative and responsive manufacturing enterprises

The paper discusses manufacturing enterprises’ compelling challenges that are directly stemming from generic conflicts between competition and cooperation, local autonomy and global behavior, design and emergence, planning and reactivity, uncertainty and a plethora of information. Responses in product and service design, organization of production networks, planning and management of operations, as well as production control are surveyed. As illustrated through industrial case studies, production engineering should integrate a rich body of interdisciplinary results together with contemporary information and communication technologies in order to facilitate cooperation and responsiveness that are vital in competitive, sustainable manufacturing.