Supply chain optimization: A smart goods inward station for automated and demand-orientated material flow in the factory

Efficient integration of logistics and process control stands as a pivotal element for the economic viability and sustainability of future end-to-end factories. The vertical and horizontal networking of machines presents new opportunities for enhancing production control. Within the logistics chain, interlinking holds the potential to enable a fully automated flow of materials, thus, increasing production adaptability and efficiency. This paper proposes a novel approach to realizing a smart goods inward station by integrating a cost-efficient control logic paired with a material-flow-optimized handling of small load carriers. The developed innovative station overcomes sequential first-in-first-out delivery processes by modifying the material flow of small load carriers and parallelizing unload processes from a dynamic queue, which avoids supply bottlenecks and redundant buffers for optimizing the just-in-time supply chain and reducing non-productive times. By the addition of automated guided vehicles, unloading and delivery processes can be fully automated. A comparison with conventional first-in-first-out systems shows that the modernized smart system increases the pick-up rate through parallel removal options and automated processes, which ultimately reduce lead times. Additionally, the station is equipped with sensors and control logics, which are connected to a logistics system via cost-efficient microcontrollers as modular components. Through these components, it becomes feasible to extend existing logistics chains into Industry-4.0-compliant processes. To illustrate the effectiveness of this approach, the integration of a target-actual comparison within the goods inward station is demonstrated by using a microcontroller-based camera system and radio-frequency identification technology to ensure the completeness and end-to-end tracking of the delivered goods. In this way, the material flow can be controlled more economically, and the supply chain can be organized more efficiently.