Material Flow Planning

Optimize Your Material Flow with Material Flow Simulation Software

Material flow planning – using software to simplify your material management

The financial success of your company is heavily dependent on reliable intralogistics. Challenges quickly emerge, such as how to design material flow systems from the ground up or how to account for the interaction between production, supply chain transport, and storage areas. The implementation of timely and reliable decisions is crucial.

Divergent transport flows and non-transparent material flows are frequently a challenge for manufacturing companies. Additional challenges include long processing times, high production costs, and a lack of transparency and flexibility in both value stream analysis and production planning. The best strategy: material flow simulation software.

We know this process is not always easy to implement! Our ipolog software supports you every step of the way!

ipolog helps you efficiently plan your material flow layout. Make bottlenecks and interrelationships more transparent to ensure an optimal supply for your production or assembly. We provide you with digital simulation solutions for material flow so that you can utilize your tugger trains, forklifts, AGVs, and staff as efficiently as possible.

Don’t have forklifts and AGVS, but would still like to improve your tugger train system? Not sure how? Then read here how easy tugger train optimization can be: »tugger train planning with ipolog

Why is the ideal material flow management so important for your company?

Are you worried that things won't work according to plan? We understand! A sudden line stop due to a supply bottleneck is expensive. You are faced with the daily challenge of avoiding these bottlenecks and cutting costs. Calculating ideal processes and further optimization requires a great deal of time and analysis.

Material flow planning makes the material flow systems in a company visible, identifies bottlenecks and highlights correlations. Depending on the products to be produced, the material flow is optimized in terms of processes and resources to ensure an efficient supply and layout.

Here are a few benefits of implementing digitally supported material flow planning:

Digital Verification of Important Concepts
You need to ensure a continuous supply of materials in high volumes and with a large number of variants. A digitally verified supply is the best strategy.
Comprehensive Planning Using Algorithms
Your production is characterized by high complexity. Software-supported planning using algorithms takes some of the weight off your shoulders.
Reduced Planning Effort
The planning time required for material flow is high – especially for tugger trains. ipolog software saves you a lot of time and frustration.
Mastering of Complexity
Due to the complexity of increasingly individualized products, there’s no room for safety stock on the assembly line. That means your supply must be precisely timed to function correctly.

Advantages of software-supported material flow planning

Through value stream analysis or a digitalized material flow you can achieve transparent, automated tugger train planning with automatic results such as tugger train demand, employee demand, tours per day, total distance and process times. Your direct transports are also analyzed and optimized - regardless of whether they are forklifts or an AGV fleet system.

In addition, a 3D simulation for visualization and validation enables safe planning and operations. A 2D representation of the material flow using a Sankey diagram and heat map also help with system optimization.

Use our ipolog software for your material flow

Our ipolog software automatically calculates your tugger trains and other modes of transport and offers you the possibility to test your system using a simulation tool. The software calculates the necessary transports in order to implement the specified production program.

Advantages of planning in ipolog:

Automated Transport Planning
ipolog enables you to plan tugger trains and other modes of transport automatically.
Line-Back Calculation
What has to happen during the day to complete the production program? ipolog tells you!
Recording of Process Times
Process times can be stored in standard logistics processes for thousands of parts at once.
Automatic Analysis
You can look forward to an automated evaluation of resource requirements and staffing requirements (dynamic, no static Excel daily average).

Would you like to benefit from the advantages of software-supported material flow planning? Then put our ipolog software to the test.

Our approach for an optimized material flow

The path to a perfect material flow is not far away! Our ipolog software takes a lot of the work off your hands and supports you in your daily planning. Here are the steps towards substantial material flow improvement:

1. Initial Analysis
initial material flow analysis and preparation of the planning basis (resources, process and time modules, shift schedule, parts data, production data, Excel sheets) and subsequent mapping of the layout
2. Modeling of Material Flows
modeling of material flows and assignment of parts directly in ipolog
3. Precise Calculations
with its sophisticated algorithms, ipolog provides an exact calculation of resource requirements
4. Overview of Costs
full insight into the complete cost and personnel evaluation

Material Flow Planning