Selected aspects of development and planning of production and logistic systems

The continuously growing portion of such new components of value added as production-supporting services is one of the features of changing production in developed countries. This paper is focused on systems of production and on production in its entirety. Special attention is paid to the relation between these systems and the logistics to put them into practice. Recycling engineering and the utilization of secondary materials will contribute to a new domain of production-the so-called production of grade two. A number of philosophies for the development, planning and organisation of factories will be discussed and conclusions will be drawn on how to deal with such components of production as autonomy, self-organisation and hierarchies. The planning of production and logistics is challenged in a new way by the dynamics of process organisation and distribution. Production including recycling, and logistics are principally bound up with organisation and have to be adequately developed in future. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.