Transition to Autonomous Logistics

Abstract

In autonomous logistics, the participating logistics entities are themselves responsible for achieving the objectives imposed by their owners. Delegating decision-making to the local entities is a significant difference to conventional approaches with centralised control. An operationalisation for autonomous control of logistics processes has been developed in Chapters 5 to 7. The actual implementation with multiagent systems is described in Chapter 8. As a foundation for a transition from centralised to autonomous control, it is important to evaluate the new method. For some aspects, this evaluation can be conducted analytically. Hence, there is no need for simulation in these cases (Wenzel, Weiβ, Collisi-Böohmer, Pitsch & Rose, 2008, p. 15). For more complex runtime interactions of autonomous logistics entities, however, simulation is an appropriate means of investigation. As discussed in Section 8.2, multiagent-based simulation is particularly suited for examining the actual agent behaviour as it would be in real-world operation.