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Background: Milkrun-based material supply plays an important role in the automotive industry, as it is a material supply concept where high efficiency can be achieved. When implementing milkrun-based material supply, the milkrun supply of the production plant often has to be integrated with an existing warehouse material handling system, which frequently leads to a less efficient solution. Methods: In this paper, the author investigates the impact of a hub-based milkrun supply, where the collection processes in the component's warehouse and the distribution processes in the assembly plant are connected to a hub, which is responsible for the sequencing of component demands. After a systematic literature review, the paper introduces a novel mathematical model, which makes it possible to describe the conventional milkrun-based solutions, the hub-based milkrun solutions, and to compare them in terms of the length of transportation routes, transportation time, total service time, and virtual emission points of view. Results: The scenario analysis demonstrates that the hub-based solution can lead to an efficiency improvement of about 13% in total service time, 23% savings in transportation time, and 45% savings in transportation time in the component's warehouse. Conclusions: The article's findings suggest that implementing a hub-based milkrun system in automotive material supply can significantly enhance efficiency. The described approach could lead to more streamlined operations in production plants by optimizing the integration of milkrun systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial revolutions have always brought about major changes in the life of mankind. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has revolutionized industrial production through digitalization, but has also had a major impact on service processes. However, the so-called Industry 4.0 technologies applied in the context of the fourth industrial revolution also allow new goals to be achieved that were not yet clearly defined in the paradigm of the fourth industrial revolution: sustainability, resiliency, and human-centricity. In this article, the author seeks to answer the questions of what existing technologies can be used to achieve the goals of sustainability, resiliency, and human-centricity, and what are the main research directions that can be used to develop a sustainable production and service environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficient operation of logistic processes requires a wide range of design tasks to ensure efficient, flexible and reliable operation of connected production and service processes. Autonomous electric vehicles support the flexible in-plant supply of cyber-physical manufacturing systems. Within the frame of this article, the extension of the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem with recharge stations is analyzed. The objective function of the optimization problem is the minimization of operation costs. The extension of 2E-VRP means that the second level vehicles (electric vehicles, must be recharged) come from one recharge station, then pick up the products from the satellite, visit the customers and return to the recharge station from where it started. We solved the route planning problem with the application of construction heuristics and improvement heuristics. The test results indicate that the combination of this approach provides a superior efficiency.

Today, U-shaped production cells play an important role in manufacturing, as their flexibility allows for highly efficient production with a small number of operators. Since the cost of human resources has a significant impact on the total cost of the overall production process and the assignment of operators to tasks can have a major impact on the efficiency of the production process, it is important to develop design methods that allow the assignment of resources to tasks in a way that maximizes the efficiency of the U-cell manufacturing system. In this paper, the authors present a mathematical model for assigning operators to task sets using different objective functions. Calculations based on the presented mathematical model demonstrate that, given a suitable choice of objective functions, it is possible to determine an optimal operator-task assignment that can improve the efficiency of the manufacturing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The supply chain processes are key to improving the cost efficiency and sustainability of manufacturing and service companies. One of the most innovative strategies of just-in-sequence supply is the ship-to-sequence, which offers improvement possibilities over traditional just-in-time approaches. This paper focuses on the implementation of modelling ship-to-ship supply, especially the basic mathematical modelling in these strategies. It not only evaluates the entire supply process, but it enables a thorough examination of a comprehensive analysis of the financial impact of ship-to-ship supply for both suppliers and endusers. It goes beyond the analysis of the entire supply process; it allows an examination of selected processes at deeper levels and evaluates the impact of different factors on financial indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]