Process improvement in manufacturing logistics and its application

Logistics operations in a manufacturing system have critic importance just like for the trasportations betwee facilities or facility and customers. Working stations are the customers of each others and the production plan is the order in a manufacturing logistics system. The design of the functional areas and assignment of the goods to the related fuctional areas in the warehouse management system (WMS) are also critic activities for the manufacturing logistics systems. With an eye to this importance, material flows between some of the working stations of a household appliance company were analyzed. A multi objective non-linear mathematical optimization model was generated to determine the suitable material flows for the goods, to assign the goods to the suitable material flows and to determine the number and the types of the material handling devices for the manufacturing system. ABC/XYZ Analyses and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were applied to determine the characteristics of the goods for the material flows. The mathematical model was solved by the Sakawa and Nishizaki Fuzzy Multi Objective Approach and GAMS software was used.