Material flow is the description of the transportation of raw materials, pre-fabricates, parts, components, integrated objects and finally products as a flow of entities. The term applies mainly to advanced modeling of Supply chain management

Supply chain management

Supply chain management is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers...

. As industrial material flow can easily become very complex Plant Simulation

Plant Simulation

Plant Simulation is a computer application developed by Siemens PLM Software for modeling, simulating, analyzing, visualizing and optimizing production systems and processes, the flow of materials and logistic operations...

 Software has been developed to simulate, visualize, analyze and optimize these processes.

Origin

The aim of understanding the inflow and outflow of materials and objects no longer as a sequence of residing pools but as a stream or flow shall re-orient the understanding of material management from the stock and warehouse management concept to a flow management concept, where residing quantities and volumes may be minimized.

See also

• Cash flow
  Cash flow
  Cash flow is the movement of money into or out of a business, project, or financial product. It is usually measured during a specified, finite period of time. Measurement of cash flow can be used for calculating other parameters that give information on a company's value and situation.Cash flow...
  
  
• Industrial ecology
  Industrial ecology
  Industrial Ecology is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modeled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities which can be bought and sold to meet the...
  
  
• Information flow
  Information flow
  In discourse-based grammatical theory, information flow is any tracking of referential information by speakers. Information may be new, just introduced into the conversation; given, already active in the speakers' consciousness; or old, no longer active...
  
  
• Input Output Analysis
• Sustainability
  Sustainability
  Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...