Nowadays, production enterprises are faced with an array of challenges including increasing pressure regarding costs, demands for individualized products as well as the growing significance of logistic performance and costs, to name just a few. These in turn give rise to special requirements that the production planning, control and monitoring, among others, need to meet with suitable methods and techniques. Within this context, developments such as Industry 4.0 and cyber-physical production systems on the technology side, and approaches such as innovative learning factories for training employees hold great potential. This paper clarifies the advantages of cyber-physical systems in view of production planning, controlling and monitoring. Based on that, using the concept of IFA's Learning Factory, it describes how these can be specifically utilized in applying logistic models to improve order processing. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.