It's a balancing act.
The Toyota Manufacturing System uses the term MUDA or roughly translated Waste.
There are 7 broadly classified wastes in production (in simplistic terms) that need balancing and sometimes one can out weigh another.
The 7 wastes are Inventory, Waiting, Transportation, Motion, Over Production, Over Processing and Defects.
Obviously delivering many times per day is less efficient in Transportation terms but is more efficient in Inventory and Waiting terms.
However even that is debatable as delivering bulk into a storage area then needs re-transporting in batch sizes to the production line.
Actually there is another waste that is talked about which is not using ones Talent or People to solve the other 7 wastes.
Clever people and Consultants are paid a lot of money to try to optimise supply chains.
