| 摘要 |
<p>A system is disclosed for controlling the flow of several types of articles from one or more suppliers (10a, 10b, 10c) to a point (1) of usage. A storage (4) at the point of usage is automatically monitored to detect a need for a refill. To minimize transport costs and impact on the operation at the point of delivery, a common date is determined for delivering refills for articles of various types. In order to keep the response time of the system as low as possible, a data base in a computer (9) is maintained with the delivery time of each type of article. This allows the system to know, when a need for a refill is detected, if a given type of article can be delivered in time for the next date of delivery. In addition to this, usage information is used to set a reordering threshold. <IMAGE></p> |
