Complex Networks in Manufacturing and Logistics: A Retrospect

The methodology to model systems as graphs or networks already exists for a long time. The availability of information technology and computational power has led to a renaissance of the network modeling approach. Scientists have collected data and started to create huge models of complex networks from various domains. Manufacturing and logistics benefits from this development, because material flow systems are predetermined to be modeled as networks. This chapter revisits selected advances in network modeling and analysis in manufacturing and logistics that have been achieved in the last decade. It presents the basic modeling concept, the transition from static to dynamic and stochastic models, and a collection of examples how network models can be applied to contribute to solving problems in planning and control of logistic systems.