Transport orders in material flow control

The starting point for the execution of a transport order is a requirement from operations. The origin of such requests can be, for example, picking or production replenishments, goods receipts or stock transfers.
Larger requests are resolved by an inventory management system to such an extent that an individual inventory unit or a group of inventory units can be selected, for which a suitable transfer order is then generated.
In further consideration, a transport order therefore always refers to exactly one transport object to be processed independently, which is to be transported from its current location to its destination.

The transport order
A transport order is subdivided into individual transport orders to materials handling systems, which then actually carry out the material transport.

Finding the destination
When carrying out a transport order, the transporting system must either be able to find the specified destination itself or be guided to its transport destination.

In the first case, the transport system must decide at each decision point in which direction the transport object is to be transported by knowing its own topology.
In the second case, the ordering system must communicate the direction to be traveled in the order for each decision point.

For information on the relationship between the terms “material flow” and “merchandise management”, see Merchandise management.

Information on transport infrastructure can be found under Optimizing the use of transport infrastructure.

 

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