Whether a manufacturing capability is advance scheduled , dispatched, or pulled, depends dynamically on its capability, and its dynamic connections to the rest of the factory. Advance scheduling is highly constrained by commitments which have been made to but not constrained by demand placed by the customer.
Pull is constrained both by commitments to deliver at a given rate and by demand.
Dispatching is neither constrained by demand nor by commitments, but production is performed as the dispatching resource comes available. In traditional manufacturing systems, the whole system is set-up to advance schedule, dispatch, or pull. The modality choice is left up to each agent, may change with time for each agent, and is allowed to rest anywhere in the two dimensional continuum between the three basic modalities. Agents with mismatched modalities are interfaced to each other using techniques which depend on the specific mismatch.