The Concept of Robustness in Production Systems and its Correlation to Disturbances

The paper first presents an approach to classify different understandings of the term robustness. The classification is based on a literature review which discusses the term robustness and its correlations to the terms flexibility, resilience and risk. Thus, the similarities and differences in the understanding of robustness, flexibility and resilience will be shown and an own definition of robustness will be derived from these investigations. Given the definition of robustness, it is crucial to determine the entities against which a production system needs to be robust. In order to do this, this paper will focus on the different kinds of disturbances that pose a risk to the production system in its operational and tactical work. Finally, a first approach to analyze robustness is outlined.