Because of the constantly increasing number of variants which is vital to satisfy the customer demands nowadays there is a need to deliver a variety of parts to several stations of modern high-variant production-units. On the one hand a reliable and flexible supply of parts is essential. Otherwise there are material shortages which result in expensive line shutdowns. On the other hand high inventories impede transparency and production-processes. Furthermore they reduce the amount of available production areas.

To allow small-sized production-synchronous material supply while ensuring maximum supply security in accordance with JIT-principles the use of pull systems in conjunction with a clocked material supply is recommended. Currently the so-called supermarket-concept is used to solve this conflict of objektives. These supermarkets serve as decentralized logistics areas and provide parts for the surrounding production stations. The supermarkets in turn are supplied by large industrial trucks or tugger trains.

The aim of the research project “E|SynchroLog” is to develop a methodology for material supply with the waiver of space-, energy- and resource-consuming supermarkets. The innovative approach with this is to combine the advantages of flexibel transport systems with the possibilities of intelligent sensors, industrial 4.0-enabled PPS / ERP / MES systems, eKanban solutions and algorithmic for vehicle routing. This includes the optimization internal material supply and the external supply chain (outbound).

The overall goal is a reduction in energy demand for running the inbound-logistics system of 20%.