The adoption of production networks and distributed production planning is essential to the increase of competition and market globalization of manufacturing companies as well as Small and Medium Enterprises. In order for SMEs to gain competitive advantages to participate in this kind of network, the distributed approach of production planning requires a coordination mechanism to acquire this high level of performance. Production and Manufacturing System Management: Coordination Approaches and Multi-Site Planning presents relevant theoretical frameworks and most recent research findings in this area. This extensive collection of works provides significant theories for research students and scholars to carry out their continuous research as well as practitioners who aim to improve upon their understanding of distributed production planning.
Paolo Renna is an Assistant Professor at Department of Environmental Engineering and Physics in the Engineering Faculty of Basilicata University (Italy). He took Ph.D. degree at Polytechnic of Bari in Advanced Production Systems. His academic researches principally deal with the development of innovative negotiation and production planning in distributed environments and manufacturing scheduling in dynamic environment. Several contributions have been presented on design Multi Agent Architecture and test by discrete event simulation in Business to Business environment. Among the contributions, he is co-author of two research books about e-marketplaces and production planning in production networks. Moreover, he has developed coordination approaches in multi-plant production planning environment and innovative scheduling approaches in flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems.