Emergence of Non-predictable Dynamics Caused by Shared Resources in Production Networks

This paper discusses the usage of shared resources in the context of production networks. A simulation study investigates different scenarios of priority concepts for three companies within a small-scale production network including a shared resource. Throughput times of jobs are analyzed by means of statistical distributions as well as symbolic dynamics and time series analysis. It is shown that the collaborative usage of resources induces non-trivial dynamics that are hard to predict. This leads to the conclusion that further research is needed to analyze the possibilities and risks of resource sharing as well as to develop appropriate methods to enable a reasonable usage for manufacturing companies.