Introduction to logistics planning

Logistics planning involves organizing the movement of raw materials from an origin point to a final destination point. In the manufacturing world, logistics planning is carried out to ascertain that all required parts are available at the stations in your plant when needed.

In Teamcenter, logistics management is generally separated into categories.

• Inbound logistics refers to material movement from the vendor to the plant warehouse.

• In-plant logistics refers to material movement from the plant warehouse to a particular station.

To perform logistics planning, you build up a logistics structure that contains all relevant logistics planning information. This structure is organized around part families. These part families combine parts that are similar and require the same logistics handling. For example, your product line requires that two types of brake pads, standard and high quality, are both available at the same station. You obtain these from the same vendor so these two parts belong to the same logistics part family.

The following is an example of a logistics structure.

The following objects are used in logistics planning:

Logistics BOP

A logistics planner builds a logistics bill of process that helps to organize the part families and run reports to determine the logistics costs and transportation volumes for a given product.

Logistics folder

A folder assists you in organizing the logistics structure. If you are dealing with large logistics structures, it is useful to group the structure under the root level using folders.

Part family

A part family is a collection of parts that share the same logistics plan and share similar characteristics. For example, all parts in a part family may come from the same vendor. All the parts sharing the same logistics characteristics are found in the same part family.

Supply chain

A supply chain is a combination of storage and provision processes and transportation. A supply chain describes how a part is delivered from the warehouse to the provision area at the production line. The supply chain consists of:

Inbound supply chain The inbound supply chain reflects the route from the vendor to the warehouse.

In-plant supply chain The in-plant supply chain reflects the route from warehouse to the station.

Logistic provision process

The logistics provision process defines the station to which parts are delivered. Only one station can be assigned to a logistics provision process.

Container

A container represents a physical object that holds or transports something.

Vehicle

You assign a vehicle to supply chain transport processes to specify the type of vehicle used to transport the parts or raw materials. The vehicle object is used for various calculations such as resource demand and transportation capacity.

Because a logistics BOP is based on a plant BOP, you can only use the logistics features with enterprise bill of process structures.

Related Topics

• Setting up logistics planning