DB Schenker regularly receives from potential or existing customers the opportunity to submit an offer for a logistics service put out to tender (here in focus: order-picking in warehouses) or to continuously improve existing warehouses. Currently, the solutions developed for each tender or improvement project bear the individual signature of the responsible employee. There is no structured and standardized decision support or a modular system to support the tender preparation for new warehouses or the improvement process for existing warehouses. One possible solution, which is pursued in the present research project, is the use of simulation software. This is intended to systematically consider the effects of the various possible solutions for order picking services under uncertain conditions (e.g. fluctuations in the level of demand, temporal distribution of demand) on logistics costs and performance both in the planning and improvement phase.
The planned project should extend the decision support developed in the projects “SyD1” to “SyD3” in such a way that an evaluation of the generated solutions is made possible by a systematic comparison and a robust solution can be identified. The method used for this is a systematic parameter variation. By an algorithm-supported selection of individual factor combinations, an efficient and comprehensive experimental design is to be generated with controllable computational effort.
SyD4 – Systematic service engineering in contract logistics
- Modeling approach: Discret-event
- Performance criterion: Investigation of the impact of multiple possible solutions for picking services under uncertain conditions (e.g., fluctuations in demand levels, distribution of demand over time) on logistics costs and performance.
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