Increasing the efficiency of closed loops of reusable containers in production environments concerning container cleaning

Today reusable containers, widely used in closed loops in production environments, are cleaned irrespective of their cleanliness-status and thus the actual necessity for being cleaned. This often leads to a considerable degree of technically superfluous container-cleaning, associated with high costs, transport efforts and resource utilization. This paper aims at investigating ways to harness the savings potential of a necessity based triggering of the cleaning process amid securing the quality of the container supply, controlling the uncertainty introduced into the container-loops through the status-dependent triggering of cleaning and establishing a process transparency enabling a reduction of the overall container inventory. A case study performed in an automotive supplier is included.