Analysis of real-time tour building and scheduling strategies for in-plant milk-run systems with volatile transportation demand

Abstract In modern manufacturing systems, milk run (MR) systems represent route-based, cyclic material-handling systems that are used widely and enable frequent deliveries of containerized parts in small lot sizes from a central storage area to multiple points of use on the factory floor. Usually, deliveries take place at predetermined, constant time intervals. As in real-world MR systems, the number of containers to deliver in each interval varies in the short term, peaks in the number of deliveries may lead to capacity bottlenecks and late deliveries. In this paper, we develop three alternative strategies to determine starting times of MR cycles in real-time based on the current number of delivery orders in the system aiming to better handle variations in the number of orders. We evaluate the three strategies for different system load scenarios with respect to delivery service levels, order lead times, systems utilization and necessary number of MR trains using a discrete-event simulation model.