Material flow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Material flow (MF) is the description of the transportation of raw materials, pre-fabricates, parts, components, integrated objects and finally products as a flow of entities. The term applies mainly to advanced modeling of Supply chain management. As industrial material flow can easily become very complex Plant Simulation Software has been developed to simulate, visualize, analyze and optimize these processes.
[edit] Origin
The aim of understanding the inflow and outflow of materials and objects no longer as a sequence of residing pools but as a stream or flow shall re-orient the understanding of material management from the stock and warehouse management concept to a flow management concept[1], where residing quantities and volumes may be minimized.
