Fakultät Maschinenbau
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In-plant milk-run systems are transportation systems, where materials are delivered from a central storage area to several points of use on defined routes and in short intervals. Milk-run systems generally enable frequent deliveries in smaller lot sizes with short lead times and low inventory at the points of use. In real milk-run systems, the number of deliveries per interval varies due to, e.g., variations in the production program. To enable efficient and stable milk-run system operations, these systems therefore must be able to cope with peaks in the number of deliveries. We develop different strategies for handling these delivery peaks and evaluate them with respect to delivery cost, lead time and service level using real material consumption data from two large companies from the automotive industry.
In modern manufacturing systems, milk run (MR) systems represent route-based, cyclic material-handling systems that are used widely and enable frequent deliveries of containerized parts in small lot sizes from a central storage area to multiple points of use on the factory floor. Usually, deliveries take place at predetermined, constant time intervals. As in real-world MR systems, the number of containers to deliver in each interval varies in the short term, peaks in the number of deliveries may lead to capacity bottlenecks and late deliveries. In this paper, we develop three alternative strategies to determine starting times of MR cycles in real-time based on the current number of delivery orders in the system aiming to better handle variations in the number of orders. We evaluate the three strategies for different system load scenarios with respect to delivery service levels, order lead times, systems utilization and necessary number of MR trains using a discrete-event simulation model.