A smart palletising planning and control model in Logistics 4.0 framework.

The paper describes a smart model for palletising as main intra-logistics task for product-on-pallet distribution, and its development in Logistics 4.0 framework aligned to Industry 4.0. The model is developed in holonic paradigm as a 2-layer Holonic Logistics Execution System (HLES) in semiheterarchical topology. Scheduling of logistics activities and allocation to resources are optimised for global efficiency on compact time periods. The logistics model virtualises physical entities: resources, pallets and orders as holons implemented with digital twin software, and categories of task workloads: resource health monitoring, dispatching and tracking pallet orders, re-assigning jobs at resource failure, which grants reality-awareness and robustness. Global workload optimisation uses Constraint Programming as decision making technology with ILOG optimiser engine as situation-specific solver tool in SaaS cloud model, and delegate multi-agent system (MAS) technology for intelligence distribution. The optimised objective function is a combination of palletising cost weighted by robot speed limits and pallet storage cost in payable stocks. The main constructs are exemplified and validated on a real-life structure with multiple palletising resources in which programmable logic controllers (PLC) coordinate locally the parallel execution of order holons according to their globally optimised sequence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]