IoT Enabled Production-Logistic Synchronization in Make-to-Order Industry

This paper investigates the synchronized production-logistics decision and execution problem under a specific industry format: make-to-order (MTO) production with cross-docking (CD) warehouse. The MTO strategy only manufactures the end product once the customer places the order. Normally, MTO firms need a space for temporal storing finished product and consolidating different finished products within the same customer order. The cross-docking policy is widely adopted to operate the t warehouse. In this environment, the production and logistics have multiple interactions in decision making and execution. This special problem is defined as MTO-CD synchronization. To achieve a successful MTO-CD synchronization, an IoT (Internet of Things) enabled information infrastructure is proposed. This infrastructure creates a closed decision-execution loop of by linking the frontline real time data, user feedback and optimized computation together. A real life case study in a chemical firm has been conducted to illustrate the usage as well as the effectiveness of proposed total solution.