Where to start with digital twins in manufacturing? Well, we usually start with internal logistics. Why? Because there are enormous losses = the highest ROI! How is that? Logistics is often the last one in optimization! People think "they are just delivery boys"... 🙄
If logistics were so easy, armies wouldn't fail because of missing stuff - not just nowadays. And, measuring production is much easier than measuring internal logistics. In production, you know what the input was and (hopefully) also output. But, how do we measure logistics? What are the proper criteria? And how to do it?
There are two main things, at least at the very beginning:
👉 The experience says that spaghetti charts provide essential information on where the operations are running and help find operations the management doesn't know (imagine 50 vehicles during three shifts).
👉 Saturation allows us identifying inefficiencies and uneven work distribution (some guys are overloaded while the other ones are smoking)
In the following weeks, more about how to think about the saturation, routes, ordering (Uber for plants), and how and when to "cut" the fleet, ...
And now, go, download twinzo to your smartphone and play 😉