Towards realistic task and capability descriptions in self-organizing production systems

Modern production systems are facing rapidly changing requirements due to personalized products, smaller lot sizes, and shorter time to market. Bio-inspired processes, especially self-organization, provide inspiration on how to achieve the required flexibility. Self-organizing systems achieve flexibility by autonomously monitoring themselves and their environment and adapting to changes observed. Therefore, approaches promising self-organization have received great attention in the research community. Despite the promising characteristics of self-organizing production systems, uptake in industry is small. This paper presents unrealistic task and capability descriptions as an impediment for further adoption and identifies areas of contribution. Furthermore, we outline a research agenda and methodology to address the problem. Finally, the expected results are discussed.