Material Flow

Logistics
Prof. E.A.M. Mjema
College of Engineering and
Technology
Material flow logistics
In MFL we are dealing with: Work aids
(support) systems for Material Flow,
support systems planning, warehouse
system planning
Material flow-The function of
maintaining a constantly available
supply of materials needed for
production. Such materials may include
raw materials, purchased items, or
assembled items
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Material flow logistics
Material flow-The movement of materials to,
through, and from productive processes; in
warehouses and storage; and in receiving and
shipping areas
Material Handling- Material Handling is the
movement, storage, control and protection of
materials, goods and products throughout the
process of manufacturing, distribution,
consumption and disposal. The focus is on the
methods, mechanical equipment, systems and
related controls used to achieve these functions
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Material flow logistics
Material Handling Principles- A principle is
a general rule, fundamental, or other statement
of an observed truth.
The "principles" of material handling are often
useful in analyzing, planning and managing
material handling activities and systems. At the
very least they form a basic foundation upon
which one can begin building expertise in
material handling

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Terminology - Intra-logistics
Intra-logistics describes the
organisation, realisation and
optimization of internal material flow
and logistic technologies as well as the
goods transshipment in industry, trade
and in public institutions by means of
technical components, partial and full
systems and services

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Terminology - Intra-logistics
Intra-logistics as a brand describes the
organisation, realisation and optimization of
internal material flows in industries by means of
technical systems and services
It refers to the internal material flow between
the different "logistic hubs" - from the material
flow in production, in goods distribution centers
and in airports and seaports - as well as the
related information flow

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Terminology - Intra-logistics
Intra-logistics is the term of a trendsetting
industry, which comprises thousands of
companies from manufacturers of lifting
devices and cranes, fork lift trucks and
warehouse technology up to software
developers and providers of complete
systems

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Terminology - Intra-logistics
The functions of the transportation,
handling, warehousing and
commissioning systems are more
important at the level of material flow (see
figure 2.1)

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 Management Level

Enterprise Logistics

Logistics Management Level / Planning, Management, Monitoring

Procurement Production Distribution Sales Disposal Dealings

Material flow level

Transportation Handling Warehousing Commissioning …

Figure 2.1: Organisation of Enterprise Logistics

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Material Handling functions
An optimal fulfilment of these functions
(i.e. transportation, handlings,
warehousing, commissioning, etc.) has a
decisive effect on the total success of an
enterprise. Therefore, in this topic we will
discuss the necessary requirements for
the organisation of the internal material
flow in an enterprise

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Terminology
Material flow techniques refer to the
study of technical design, development,
construction, working methods
(procedures) and the organisation of
material flow systems.

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Terminology
Transportation refers to the changing of
place of the goods/items to be
transported.
In relationship to material flow, it will also
refer interim transportation
The internal material handling facilities
characterise the movement of work piece
or a person from one point to another
point in a system
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Terminology
The terminology handling is differently
defined in various literatures
In this course, handling will refer to the
changing over of goods from one means
of production to another means, whereby
either the one of the means of work must
be active or as far as both are passive, a
third active means of production must be
installed

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Terminology
The terminology warehousing refers to
a planned lying of raw materials, work
piece, or finished products in the material
flow process.
The commissioning refers to that
compilation of a specific amount of
articles from an already provided total
amount for the purpose of Information
requirements.

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Work Aids and Warehousing
For the planning of an optimum material flow it
is important to look into the functions of work
aids (support) and warehousing and in
relation to the Installation of work aids and
warehousing techniques
Work aids and Warehousing goods can be
classified according to the form they appear,
such as solid, liquid or gaseous form
E.g. the liquid and stuff in a gaseous form must
be always packed in some other means

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Material Flow and Productivity
Productivity and material flow are two
words easy to say, but two concepts
which are not so simple to explain
Take productivity: it's the ratio of the
output (goods and/or services) of a given
enterprise per unit of time divided by
the total labor hours required to create
it

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Material Flow and Productivity
A positive trend is when either the numerator
(output) goes up or the denominator (total
labor hours as a measure of input) goes down,
or both
i.e.Producing, in the case of manufacturing, or
delivery, in the case of a distribution center,
more with a fixed number of labor hours
Alternatively, producing or delivering a fixed
amount with less input

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Material Flow and Productivity
Things get complicated when productivity is used
as a tool of measuring management, because
what you are really doing is measuring the
efficiency by which input is converted to output
In productivity context, human labor is not naked,
it is supported, and indeed its efforts leveraged by
both the design and arrangement of work and the
invested capital in tools with which labor is
provided to do its work
Make work easier to perform and productivity
will go up
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Material Flow and Productivity
As a management tool, the concept of
productivity can be applied to not just total output
(e.g., units produced) but output at different
stages in a product's life cycle, as well as
measures of input other than labor (e.g., energy)
The main point is that there are enumerable
ways by which material handling practices
and its associated technologies can
contribute to improved productivity

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Material Flow and Productivity
Examples:
Making work (e.g., lifting, loading and
repositioning) easier to do, with less effort =>
think ergonomics, facilitates a higher pace of
work, thus allowing more work to be performed in
a given period of time
Providing work aids related to the foregoing
contributes to requiring less labor by reducing
injury, minimizing absenteeism, and in the end
keeping labor turnover and associated costs
down
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Material Flow and Productivity
The principle of minimizing human touches on
an item as it makes its way to the output stage is
a form of lean => touches are to be viewed as
waste if they are not involved in adding value to
what is being processed=> Fewer touches =>
fewer indirect labor hours
The arrangement of work such that every stage
of work is immediately adjacent (or as close as
possible) to every succeeding stage, minimizing
travel time, thereby cycle time, and thus
increasing flow and output
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Material Flow and Productivity
Where travel distances are unavoidable,
and flow frequency is high, mechanical
aids (e.g., carts, lift trucks, and other
continuous flow, conveying devices)
increase flow rates and reduces the work
required of labor

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 Material Flow and Productivity
– Floor Space
Floor space is a form of input that can be viewed a
number of ways as a detractor to productivity
When minimized by the application of appropriate
storage medium (given the need for storage,
however temporary for buffering or work staging) a
degree of order to the work place is created by way
of less clutter, thus being a safer work environment
with fewer accidents, and with the added advantage
of knowing where things are located, how many you
have, and facilitating high volume order picking with
as little labor as possible

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 Material Flow and Productivity –
Unit Load
Unit load handling reduces work effort and
labour – rather than move, or even store, multiple
things one at a time, accumulate them into a
single load for a one time move or a one time store
or retrieve
The larger the unit load, either because of weight
or size, the more likely mechanical aids and unit
load platforms such as pallets, totes and other
forms of containment enter the picture
The principle of unit loads emerged during World
War II as a result of specific efforts to streamline
supply logistics to the frontlines – this being the
first time that logistics and material handling
became one in the same
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 Material Flow and Productivity –
Unit Load
An outgrowth of the unit load principle
were the issues surrounding the protection
of loads through various means e.g.
wrapping, strapping
The lack of adequate protection results in
damage, requiring in the best of
circumstances rework and even scrap,
thereby necessitating excess production
and otherwise unneeded reserve supplies
Ergo, more input in the denominator of the
productivity equation – In the worst of
cases, disaster when it comes to mission
critical scenarios such as supplying the
front lines
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 Material Flow and Productivity
It should be clear from the foregoing examples
that technology is but part of the
equation to increasing productivity; the
other part is process, practice and the
design of work
Material Handling is all of that – It is both
an industry of technology suppliers aiming at
improved productivity measures, and it is way
of thinking about work itself, making it
simpler, making it easier to perform, and
creating systems of work that are integrated
and tightly coordinated
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 Material Handling
Material handling is about flow,
and not just material flow

Every time something moves or is

moved, conditions about that
something change . e.g., how much
was moved, when it was moved,
where it was moved and when it
arrived => information flows when
material flows

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Material Handling
Integrated and tightly coordinated
operations demand that access to
flow information be in the real-time
(i.e. concurrent with the actual
physical act being performed) =>
the technologies associated with
automatic identification (e.g. a bar
coding), are considered an intrinsic
aspect of material handling
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Material Flow and Productivity
The physical tools of Material Handling can
be both manual in their application,
meaning non-powered, and they can be
highly automated
While automated implies less labor it also
implies degrees of accuracy, precision,
predictability, repeatability and throughput,
in most cases not achievable any other way
In deciding what to apply, it gets down to
how much these attributes are worth to the
enterprise and the business at hand
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 Material Flow and Productivity
Executives who pay scant attention to the
measurement and management of
productivity, or the role that material handling
plays will be hobbling their ability to improve
return on equity and thus shareholder value
In the worst of cases, these will be the
enterprises not in business in the decades to
follow, if not sooner – measurement is a very
difficult thing to instill in most enterprises
In fact the only way to make it happen is for
executive management to take a stand and
make it happen

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Logistics terminology - revisited
Logistics is the arrangement and
deployment of assets and the execution of
business processes in a way which ensures
that products, goods, and materials get to
where they are needed, when they are
needed, not a minute too soon or too late,
in the right (required) quantity, in the right
sequence, in the right condition
(undamaged), and at a cost that cannot be
matched any other way

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Logistics terminology - revisited
The issue to be addressed here is
when is “logistics” become
“material handling”, or conversely,
when is “material handling” become
“logistics”?
The question needs to be answered
here only because of historical
reasons and the evolution of
logistics as a profession
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Logistics terminology - revisited
The application domain most often thought
about when it comes to logistics is that
which is largely external to a fixed facility
(i.e. supply and re-supply throughout a
chain of business partners involved in
sourcing, making and delivering materials
and goods, locally, regionally, or globally)
A logistic function in this context that is
always thought about is transportation,
meaning modes, carriers, routes and other
aspects of transportation
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Logistics terminology - revisited
The other application domain gaining greater
recognition from a logistics point of view is
that which occurs within the walls of a
facility, from ‘dock in’ to ‘dock out’, primarily
meaning within a manufacturing plant, a
warehouse or a distribution center
It is here where material handling plays such
a dominate and critical role. Two new
terms have emerged to describe the material
handling function in this application domain

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Logistics terminology - revisited
Europeans have adopted the term ‘Intra-
logistics’ as a way of differentiating
between the processes involved in external
supply and those involved within a facility
U.S. practitioners, particularly those in
academic circles, have started to use the
term ‘Facility Logistics” in that it embraces
much more than simply the physical and
often manual connotation associated with
handling
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Logistics terminology - revisited
A challenge is in the case of integrated
logistics and the streamlining of supply
processes from end to end, including that
which takes place in a manufacturing plant
and within distribution centers
A way of visualizing a company that is
focused on such a total process is to define
logistics measures at the business process
level first and only then at the functional level
The three key processes are 1) Sourcing/
Procurement; 2) Fulfillment; and 3) Planning/
Forecasting/Scheduling (See Figure 2.2)

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 Logistics terminology - revisited

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Logistics terminology - revisited
In the view shown on the figure,
warehousing, fulfillment, and material
handling are called out separately, where
in fact the material handling industry
embraces warehouse operations,
fulfillment and material handling
operations as being one in the same
You have heard it throughout; it is an industry
whose technologies and principles are
dedicated to delivering shareholder value and
productivity by creating order, maintaining
flow and developing flexibility

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Logistics terminology - revisited
The truth is, the foregoing picture is a good
view; but the real hallmark of a successful
organization will be the one that
approaches the engineering of its logistics
processes and supporting functions in as
much of a concurrent manner as possible
Herein lays the challenge to the brain trust
resident in our universities and other think
tanks, to create the tools that will allow
such concurrent engineering to take place

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