Concept of long-term sustainable intralogistics in plastic recycling factory

Abstract

This paper focuses on the sustainability of material flow and intralogistics in factories, two of the primary keys to productivity. In the past ten years, there has been significant interest in the sustainability of intralogistics to increase productivity. The aim of this article is to investigate the consequences of combining two factories into one, followed by the design of new material flows and intralogistics from a long-term perspective and with respect to sustainability. Therefore, this paper outlines sustainability variants of new material flow solutions in factories. Our methods and approaches were chosen because they represent one of the most rapid ways to rationalise material flows and intralogistics in factories to sustain this concept. In comparison with other projects that eliminate problems in the short term, we have focused on the overall long-term and sustainable concept of intralogistics and material flows over the next 10 to 15 years. Our approach has the potential to increase productivity intralogistics and its long-term sustainability. The proposed variants were verified and evaluated using visTable®touch software (v.2.7, plavis GmbH, Chemnitz, Germany). On the basis of these results, the rational variant of material flows was chosen for the factory. This variant has the highest overall improvement of 25%, even after the implementation of factory two into factory one.