Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML
The Supply Chain Engineering department offers individualized IT systems for support in availability planning
Effective availability planning is the basis for a stable supply of parts in long supply chains. Since on international supply relations sometimes costly parts/modules with many variants are transported, it is not economical to compensate demand fluctuations with high safety stocks. However, short-term adjustments in the order processing (changes in program planning or order adjustments) or fluctuations in process times (disturbances in the process) sometimes lead to substantial deviations between initially planned demands / demand times and actually incoming material from international supply relations. In order to address this challenge, a planning method is needed that evaluates the effects of bottlenecks and stochastic influences in the dynamic material flow of global supply chains and compare these with the changing system load (demand, demand times for production and/or customers). The target is to identify shortfalls or surpluses and derive suitable measures on time.