Research project of Plan B Factory Consulting

The goal of the INSERT project, which is financially supported by the EU, is to develop an assistance system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to support employees in the creation of concepts in the area of logistics and production planning.

The system is to be designed in such a way that the planner first enters all necessary key data of the tender, for example required capacities, time periods, etc., into the assistance system. The artificial intelligence (AI) of the assistance system, which is built on expert knowledge and current as well as historical key figures and operational data (space requirements, machines, personnel, required load carriers and conveyors, etc.), generates an initial rough concept based on this information. In practice, even the development and evaluation of such initial rough concepts requires a lot of time, expertise and personnel. The automated generation by an AI should therefore significantly increase the planning speed and relieve the planner with regard to simple, repetitive tasks.

After the creation of the rough concept, the planner has the possibility to adapt and optimize the concept. The assistance system notes the changes and uses them to further improve its AI, if necessary. From the adjusted rough concept, the system then automatically generates a material flow simulation that checks whether any specifications are met. Bottlenecks are identified from the result of the simulation and recommendations for action are derived. In terms of positive human-technology interaction, these recommendations are always presented with a rationale, so that the planner first understands the problem and can then fix it, and less experienced planners in particular have a learning effect from the AI, since it carries the expert knowledge of many experienced planners.

The system is thus intended to accompany the entire planning process and provide a platform for developing logistics or production planning concepts.  

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