Decision Support Systems in the Context of Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems promise a complete networking of all actors and resources involved in production and thus an improved availability of information. In this context decision support systems enable appropriate processing and presentation of the captured data. In particular, production scheduling could benefit from this, since it is responsible for the short-term planning and control of released orders. Since decision support systems and cyber-physical systems together are not yet widely used in production scheduling, the aim of this research study is to analyse the adoption of these technologies. In order to do so, we conducted a qualitative interview study with experts on production scheduling. Thereby, we identified eleven influencing factors and 22 related challenges, which affect the adoption of decision support systems in production scheduling in the context of cyber-physical systems. We further discuss and assess the identified influencing factors based on the interview study. The results help to explain and improve the adoption of those systems and can serve as a starting point for their development.