The high system flexibility necessary for the full automation of complex and unstructured tasks leads to increased technological complexity, thus to higher costs and lower performance. In this paper, after an introduction to the different dimensions of flexibility, a method for flexible modular configuration and evaluation of systems of systems is introduced. The method starts from process requirements and, considering factors such as feasibility, development costs, market potential and effective impact on the current processes, enables the evaluation of a flexible systems of systems equipped with the needed functionalities before its actual development. This allows setting the focus on those aspects of flexibility that add market value to the system, thus promoting the efficient development of systems addressed to interested customers in intralogistics. An example of application of the method is given and discussed.

The authors present a conceptual framework for solving the task of document analysis, which, in essence, consists in the conversion of the document's pixel representation into an equivalent knowledge network representation holding the document's content and layout. Starting on the pixel level, the formation of elementary geometric objects on which layout analysis as well as the definition of character objects is based is described. Character recognition accomplishes the mapping from geometric object to character meaning in ASCII representation. On the next level of abstraction words are formed and verified by contextual processing. Modeled knowledge about complete documents and about how their constituents are related to the application forms the highest level of abstraction. The various problems arising at each stage are discussed. The dependencies between the different levels are exemplified and technical solutions put forward.>