The present-day situation in manufacturing is characterized by a trend towards holistic solutions of manufacturing processes. Integration of the entire communication and information flow in the factory from the management level down to the process level is the significant distinction to former approaches. Decreasing product life-cycles and lot sizes, growing variant spectra and increased demands on the product quality intensify this evolution.

Recent manufacturing concepts were based on CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) consisting of deterministic linear steps in the task hierarchy from planning functions to highly automated workpiece processing. This led to a ”man-less factory” with the consequence of low interaction possibilities in case of failure operations.

Actual research is focused on implementing autonomy functions in manufacturing systems leading to autonomous production cells (APC). The step from automation to autonomy is emphasized. In this context the role of the user (operator) has to be redefined. The former state of the user as supporting manufacturing in the case of errors or failures will be changed in the manner that the manufacturing system supports the user in finding adequate solutions to continue the processing task. This leads to a redefinition of the user’s responsibility, competence and authority.

Outstanding characteristic of an APC is the capability to link planning functions and processing tasks to a feed-back system. The APC covers an internal stage of planning and is coupled to higher degrees of hierarchical levels. Linking factory automation and autonomous production cells with regard to product life-cycles leads to a new approach of manufacturing.

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