Material flow

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.

For complex systems, several different specialized simulation tools are developed. Typical tools are:

• Plant Simulation for production systems
• AutoMod for logistics systems
• Anylogic

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.

See also

• Cash flow
• Industrial ecology
• Information flow
• Input Output Analysis
• Sustainability

References