Patent ID: 6954874

Claim:
Diagnosis method for monitoring the available resources in a production process with supply links, which comprise in particular production plants and/or service providers, in which components are supplied by a number of supply links to a system provider, which puts these components together to form a system, in which any number of supply links are situated in relation to one another in an interconnected supply chain, so that they are in turn supplied by other supply links, each supply link having an input buffer, an output buffer and a process stage, the diagnosis method comprising the steps that firstly an identification number is determined for each supply stage on the basis of the design of its buffers and its process stage, that information concerning the predicted demands of the system provider in their time sequence is made available by the system provider continually over time to each supply link, that information concerning the momentary stock of its buffers is supplied continually over time by each supply link, that the identification numbers of the supply links are used to determine continually over time whether their momentary buffer stocks satisfy the predicted demands of the system provider, and that the results of this assessment are made available continually over time to the supply links.