Open Access

Günter Bitsch, Dominik Lucke, Anja Braun

• With fewer available resources, product-service systems must evolve towards a circular economy. This can range from the lack of material up to fluctuating available energy due to weather conditions. Today, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) play a key role in adapting manufacturing to the current situation. However, current MES planning and scheduling focus on traditional economic and logistic-oriented optimization goals. Other aspects of sustainability, such as planned maintenance tasks that prolong the life of machines and equipment, or CO2 Footprint optimization for short-term production planning, or the short-term reallocation of human resources due to unplanned absences, are not addressed in the current planning logic. Based on emergent synthesis theory, this paper presents a novel multi-criterion planning approach for MES for manufacturing situations with uncertain and incomplete information, also including sustainability criteria. Therefore, in the planning, context information on workers, products, machines, equipment, and processes is included, along with a set of sustainability criteria.