Production and Supply Chain Management
The Institute of Production and Supply Chain Management develops methods for planning and coordinating production and logistics processes. We also study the implementation of these methods in industrial companies and are therefore constantly looking for interested research partners and projects. Our research is closely linked to industrial practice. We cooperate with companies in various projects to transfer scientific findings to production, logistics and supply chain management practice and to validate our results. Possible forms of cooperation can range from the supervision of internships, practical seminar papers, bachelor and master theses to direct cooperation projects with companies. Some selected examples:
The project aimed to investigate the material flows within an order picking warehouse with U-shaped picking zones. Planning procedures were developed that support the allocation of products to storage locations as well as the retrieval of products from the warehouse, with the objective of minimizing the distance that the pickers have to travel when processing orders.
(opens in new tab) Case Study MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG (German only)
The project focused on investigating learning effects in an order picking warehouse. We empirically studied whether the tasks performed during order picking lead to learning effects, and whether the time required to execute picking orders decreases with increasing employment duration of the picker.
(opens in new tab) Fallstudie Kneipp-Werke (German only)
The subject of the project was the documentation of business processes at HEAG BKK. The objective of the project was to secure the knowledge of the employees by documenting the business processes to protect the company against employee turnover. The documentation also aimed at enabling a uniform work quality for the various processes as well as making the training of new employees easier.
(opens in new tab) Project Presentation HEAD BKK (German only)
The aim of the workshop was the identification of factors influencing the efficiency of manual picking processes. For this purpose, data related to order picking was collected from the participating companies by means of expert discussions and questionnaires. With the help of the data obtained from company-specific case studies as well as from a simulation model, factors were identified that can increase the efficiency of the processes in manual picking.
Partners: DAW SE, Merck KGaA, STIHL Vertriebszentrale AG & Co. KG, Technische Universität Darmstadt.