Logistics

In Supply Chain Management, the coordination of information-, material- and value streams is of central importance. One possible approach is the Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment Model. In this article, the most important success factors from the areas of data quality, product structure, producer, customer and human factors are presented. A graphical method for assessing efforts and benefits, as well as optimizing the cost-benefit ratio, is presented. The method is verified based on an application example from industry.

This paper focuses on the application of a bee-like autonomous control method to a matrix-like shop floor model with setup times.Apparently present planning and control systems are unable to cope with the new needs for flexiblity and process reliability resulting from dynamics and complexity in the environment. Autonomous control means de-centralized coordination of intelligent logistic objects in a dynamically changing environment. By the aid of a continuous flow simulation the system’s performance will be analyzed in regard to the application effect on throughput times and inventory levels.

Logistics service providers intend to provide their costumers with efficient logistics processes and low-cost services. Besides the classical aspects of the controlling of the material and information flow in the supply chain, logistics service providers have begun in the last years to offer additional value added services to their costumers. The value-orientation of industrial and trading companies has put the demand on logistics service providers to provide logistics solutions for a financial optimisation of the supply chain. This contribution will show a solution in form of the “Supply Chain Finance Cooperation”.

This paper discusses ideas about and experiences with flexible simulation of real-time data streams generated by production networks when state-of-the-art automatic identification and localization technologies are applied. Flexibility here means the possibility to freely define the objects and their related types of events and statuses that are recorded in production and logistics processes. The data streams generated during simulation can be used to test and compare operational control strategies for processes in production networks in an offline or online mode.

Against the background of Basel II it gets more and more important for a company to strengthen its self-financing power to ensure liquidity. You can do this by rising sales, reducing operating expenses or shortening working capital. These levers are positively influenced by Supply Chain Management (SCM). For this reason we pick two concepts of SCM to analyse their impact on the self-financing power.

In production logistics of the machine and tool manufacturig industry RFID-systems are implemented more and more. Enterprises expect an improvement of efficiency in tracing containers and material provision. Implementation of RFID often fails because the processes should be adopted as they are and limits of the technology are not known sufficiently. This article shows the limits of RFID in tracing containers in production and introduces an approach of implementing RFID-supported processes.

The performance measures of a flow line are throughput, work in process and cycle time. Operating curves visualize their interrelations. This article shows how to compute the operating curves analytically using simple queueing models. These models and the resulting operating curves can be used to compute the performance measures of a new or reengineered production system operating under stochastic conditions.

Combined transport is currently discussed as an approach with a positive influence on the “Modal Split”. At the same time combined transport is characterized by some challenges which can be confronted by means of economic methods. Contrary to cost-value ratios, little attention was paid to price. Against this background, the present article defines pricemanagement and highlights the requirements for price management in combined transport. It concludes with an illustration of the potentials of price management in combined transport.

A crucial criterion for the competitiveness of logistic areas (besides the efficency of logistic processes) is cost transparency, i. e. the cost allocation to performed logistic services. Since logistic processes unlike production processes do not generate material goods but services, it is very common to find cost structures where traditional cost accounting systems lead to distortion of costs. Activity-based costing facilitates process-oriented cost calculation and cost allocation to service processes.

Autonomously controlled transportation processes require decision making of logistic objects regarding routing alternatives. In this contribution a multicriterial evaluation assessment procedure is introduced basing on the fuzzy hierarchical aggregation, adapted and further developed at the CRC 637 “Autonomous Control of Logistic Processes” at Bremen University. The main design focus was user-friendliness within autonomous control and other fields of application. The example of use is a hierarchical structure of the subcriteria characterising the routing alternatives of an autonomous package. It is shown that the procedure can consider unprecise and fuzzy formulated knowledge directly in the model, while parameter adjusting was reduced to a minimum. Different weightings and compensation effects of subcriteria are depicted. The contribution shows the evaluation on a two-subcriteria basis and the possibilities of multicriterial evaluation as well. The evaluation of hard and soft ...