Logistical Crash Barriers

Companies act in volatile supply networks. The increase in the degree of customization in the product development process often leads to extremely high variety and consequently to hardly manageable complexity. An apparent cause which makes it even more difficult to handle such material flows is the scarce transparency in supply networks. Most of the time, it remains unclear or is mainly evaluated intuitionally which effort, problem or delay in the subsequent value-adding processes is caused by which product variant or customer modification. Companies therefore need methodical support for the identification of the greatest potentials currently in optimization. This paper provides one possibility to assess material flows with a special eye on logistical parameters. The method should enable the identification of e.g. cost drivers or especially high time-consuming parts in the company to apply cause-related sanctions to reduce those weaknesses.