Several in-depth studies have verified the positive impact of lean techniques on performance indicators in production environments. Studies performed on warehouse environments have partially confirmed this. This thesis helped to close the gap between the disparities in the level of evidence mentioned above. A study was conducted that included 16 warehouses in an observation group and 56 warehouses in a control group. These significant results help close the gap in the evidence.

In this doctoral thesis, performance parameters of multi-server queueing systems are estimated under general stochastic assumptions. We present an exact calculation method for the discrete time distribution of the number of customers in the queueing system at the arrival moment of an arbitrary customer. The waiting time distribution and the sojourn time distribution are estimated exactly, as well. For the calculation of the inter departure time distribution, we present an approximation method.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Aufbau einer Förderstrecke mittels kleinskaliger autonomer redundanter Materialflusselemente (z.B. KARIS). Basierend auf Standardverfahren der Pfadfindung wird gezeigt, dass ein Aufbau ohne zentrale Steuerungsstrukturen möglich ist. Hierzu werden verschieden Ansätze vorgestellt und hinsichtlich ihrer Leistungsfähigkeit bewertet.

The objective of this work is to develop models for the analysis of consolidated transport processes. With the discrete time queuing models developed for inventory and vehicle consolidation, in particular milkrun systems, a detailed performance evaluation of different design scenarios can be conducted faster than with simulation. Moreover, it is demonstrated how the models can be connected with each other in form of a network analysis, in order to analyze hub-and-spoke networks.

Die Erprobung von Versuchsträgern unter Realbedingungen stellt einen elementaren Bestandteil der Fahrzeugentwicklung dar. Für eine korrekte und aussagekräftige Auswertung von Ergebnissen aus Testfahrten ist eine stets aktuelle und vollständige Dokumentation der Fahrzeugkonfiguration erforderlich. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, dass mit dem Einsatz von RFID eine im Vergleich zur konventionellen Dokumentationsmethode höhere Qualität der Bauzustandsdokumentation erreicht werden kann.

Kanban is a representative control policy pursuing cost-efficient features for the material flow system. However, the Kanban mechanism increases the system vulnerability especially when the environment is uncertain. Therefore, we proposed a robust Kanban system model for the supply chain system based on the Kanban mechanism. The model can use robust approaches from strategic, tactical, and operational levels to deal with the risks in an uncertain environment.

Throughput in manual order picking systems with narrow aisles suffers from congestion as pickers cannot pass each other. Only few models incorporate congestion but they have very strict assumptions. In this work, queueing theory is used to analyze systems with traversal routing as well as different storage policies. The models are able to estimate throughput for many alternative designs in a relatively short amount of time. New guidelines for narrow-aisle order picking systems are introduced.