WHAT IS SPS
SPS definition
A production system is called smart if it is capable of self-diagnosis and autonomous design of continuous improvement projects, leading to desired by management productivity improvement, with minimal equipment modifications and analytically predicted results
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The term self-diagnosis is used in this definition to indicate that the system has the capability of analyzing its performance, including performance losses and their causes.
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The term autonomous design is used to imply that the system has the capability of calculating actions for losses alleviation without human participation.
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The term minimal indicates that these actions can be carried out by the means within the purview of the Operations Manager (OM), e.g., without capital investments.
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Finally, the term guaranteed is used to indicate that the deployed project will indeed result in the analytically predicted system improvement.
Programmable Manufacturing Advisor
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To make a production system smart, it must be equipped with a “brain” capable of diagnosing its “health” and calculating steps for continuous improvement.
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Such a “brain,” or an AI device, has been developed in Smart Production Systems LLC (U.S. Patent No. 11,861,739, January 2, 2024) and referred to as Programmable Manufacturing Advisor (PMA).​​​​​
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Programming a PMA for and installing it at any production system - large, mid-size, or small - makes it smart (PMA-based SPS).
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The only requirement for PMA utilization on the factory floor is availability of manual or automated equipment status measurements (namely, machines’ up- and downtime, cycle time, cycle overrun, and quality characteristics).
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No similar technology is available on the market today.
Illustration of PMA-based SPS operation
SPS publications
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Smart Production Systems by S.M. Meerkov, P. Alavian, and L. Zhang (Best Seller Publishing, 2025). This textbook is intended mainly for the industrial audience, but can be used in the format of academic courses as well. It describes the main concepts, analytics, and software of SPS and provides the reader with working knowledge of PMA and PMA-based SPS. This is the only book on smart production systems published to-date. The book can be found here.
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The analytical foundation of SPS book is a monograph titled Production Systems Engineering by J. Li and S.M. Meerkov (Springer 2009, Chinese translation 2012). This is a graduate level textbook used in a number of universities throughout the world. To enable practical application of the analytics derived in this book, a software tool, referred to as PSE Toolbox, has been developed. It has been used by PSE-trained personnel for design of continuous improvement projects at GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Visteon, Kroger, Kraft, Generac, etc., consistently leading to 10%-30% of throughput increase without capital investments. PMA automates this process, making it available for managerial and engineering personnel without training in PSE or analytics in general. The book can be found here.
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There are also a number of research papers related to SPS. Several of them are mentioned below (click on the title to access the paper):
​It should be pointed out that neither the PSE book nor the above-mentioned papers are actually necessary for reading the SPS book.