Planning systems in the next century (I)

This document is the first part of two articles that present a vision on planning systems in the next century. It is mostly concerned with the medium- and long-term planning levels, whereas the second paper is much more focused on the short-term planning level, e.g., shopfloor control. First, a brief overview is given of problems that exist in current planning concepts and planning systems. The general statement is that current planning concepts and systems are often too simple in their modelling of the real world. This is illustrated using the example of Material Requirements Planning (MRP). The next section describes five ‘vision statements’ that have been setup to present a vision on future planning systems. These statements describe a number of aspects of planning systems and should be seen as high-level directions in future developments. The most important thought presented here is that a transition will take place from one centralized planning environment into an environment that contains multiple autonomous planning systems, where planning systems are able to cooperate with other planning systems based on defined protocols. Furthermore, the role of the human planner will focus much more on control instead of execution. The last section describes a number of barriers that must be overcome to realize the presented vision.