Tactical Planning of Modular Production Networks with Reconfigurable Plants

Process industries are facing strong global competition in recent years. In order to stay competitive, it is important to quickly react to new market developments and to serve specialized product demands. To meet these requirements, flexible production capacity is required. Recently, the use of modular plants has received much attention as an answer to these new challenges. Modular plants consist of standardized process modules, which allow for quick assembly, disassembly and relocation of production plants. Using modular production concepts, the flexibility of the production network is greatly increased (Seifert et al., Chemical Engineering and Technology 37(2):332–342, 2014, [6]). The technical feasibility of modular plant concepts has been proven by several projects, like the EU funded “\(F^3\)-Factory” project and the “CoPIRIDE” project (European Commission: Final report for flexible, fast and future production processes, 2014, [3]). Modular plants offer an increased manufacturing flexibility in type, volume and location of production capacities.