Transportation Processes and Vehicle Maintenance

Abstract

In cases where transport is needed it is difficult to reduce time to zero. Moving goods takes time. An approach that has been successfully used in a number of industries is moving suppliers closer to the producer of the end product in order to reduce time and transport costs. In the auto industry 70 per cent of the value of a car is delivered by suppliers who receive their orders for modules at the moment when the body of a car goes up on the assembly line. It is obvious that the suppliers cannot be located in another part of the world in this situation. They need to be close to the assembly plant, so that the delivery does not unnecessarily add time to the process. In the beverage industry suppliers of PET bottles often produce bottles in a plant beside the bottling plant and deliver them through ‘a hole in the wall’ into the bottling plant.