The article participated in the 4th edition of the “The Logistician’s Pen” competition.
The integration of the above processes into a single system allows for comprehensive management of the flow of goods and information across all spheres of the enterprise’s activity. Isolating and subsequently aggregating logistics processes within an enterprise allows them to be analyzed as a whole. The consolidation of processes leads to the creation of an integrated logistics chain.
The system can be simple or more complex, which results from the scope of the company’s activity on the market. The most complex logistics systems are found in manufacturing enterprises, especially industrial ones. However, regardless of the scale of business activity or the degree of complexity of logistics processes, the enterprise contains supply streams and distribution streams, through which the enterprise has contact with the market. In turn, within the enterprise, one can distinguish processes of internal transport, transshipment (handling), warehousing, as well as inventory maintenance. These dependencies are shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Enterprise logistics system.
Source: Own elaboration based on: M. Ciesielski, Logistics in company strategies, PWN, Warsaw 1999, p. 14.
The enterprise logistics system is therefore created through supply, production, and distribution subsystems. The supply and distribution subsystems are interfaces connecting the enterprise with its external environment. The production subsystem constitutes a platform linking the above subsystems. Furthermore, regardless of the scale of business activity and the degree of complexity of logistics processes, enterprises have supply streams and sales streams, through which the enterprise has direct contact with suppliers and the market (the company’s external environment).
The supply logistics subsystem integrates the processes of material and information flows from suppliers operating in the supply market to the enterprise’s supply warehouses. This integration primarily boils down to synchronizing the delivery of products needed for production so that they are available at the right moment of their use and are stored at a strictly defined time and place, and that subsequent batches of materials are delivered to the enterprise in accordance with the prepared schedule. For this reason, the logistics of supply processes is often called material logistics, to which three essential functions are attributed: [3]
- completeness and quality of supplies feeding the enterprise;
- appropriate timeliness and cyclicality of deliveries;
- defined reliability and effectiveness of the supply chain.
Such spatial conditioning of the supply subsystem integrates, on the one hand, the external environment of the enterprise (suppliers), and on the other, constitutes a bridge connecting the supply link and production logistics.
The production logistics subsystem deals with planning, organizing, and controlling the flow of raw materials, materials, parts, and cooperative elements during the production process, starting from supply warehouses, through intermediate departmental, cell, and workstation warehouses, up to the final warehouses of finished goods and sales. Similar to the previous subsystem, production logistics also includes:
- physical processes of flow and storage;
- information streams controlling these flows.
Production logistics managers are therefore responsible for managing the flows of material streams in the enterprise’s production process. Their actions thus concern the design of flow channels and flow control in the manufacturing process, internal transport, and work-in-progress inventory. Physical flows in the sphere of production logistics include:
- internal transport of raw materials, materials, semi-finished products, spare parts, as well as finished goods;
- technological handling activities accompanying production;
- creation and maintenance of various technological inventories and work-in-progress inventories.
The configuration of the enterprise’s production system, as well as the configuration of the production planning and control system, has a direct impact on production logistics. The production logistics subsystem is linked to the supply logistics subsystem and the distribution logistics subsystem.