You might have
heard the term “Milk Run” in a logistics context and wondered what milk has to
do with Supply Chain.
To people´s surprise
it has a lot to do! The Milk Run got its name from the milk industry practice
wherein a single tanker goes to different dairy producers every day to collect
milk and then deliver it to the milk processing firm.
In other words, Milk run in logistics
is a process for inbound deliveries to warehouses or distribution centres, or within
an internal Supply Chain, that involves a route with many stops.
To better explain this concept here
is an example. Let’s say that many different growers in one region supply corn
to a mill that makes flour. In a traditional Supply Chain, each farm could send
a delivery truck with a load of grain to the mill each day. In milk run
logistics, however, a truck would go from the mill to each of the farms and at
each stop it will pick up corn from the different suppliers.
As we said, Milk runs can also be
part of internal operations. Sometimes, they don’t even involve delivery
trucks. Let’s take the example of a heavy equipment manufacturing facility.
Several sections of the facility fabricate different parts of the machinery.
Another team does the assembly. Someone from each fabrication department could
deliver finished pieces to the assembly section. However, it’s following the
Milk run approach, it will be probably more efficient to send one driver to the
different sections to load and transport all the parts to the assembly area.
Milk runs are an excellent example of
lean management principles applied to logistics and while it can
certainly be a more efficient way to handle logistics they do take planning.
