Warehouse Operations

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Warehouse Operations
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What is Warehouse ?

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• A warehouse is a large building where goods are
  stored, and where they may be catalogued,
  shipped, or received, depending upon the type.
  Though in the past, many warehouses, often
  located in industrial areas sometimes next to
  major shipping ports, were teeming with workers,
  the modern warehouse may be either completely or
  totally automated depending upon how advanced the
  company is.

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What is Warehouse ?

• Warehouses have existed for several centuries,
  and the word itself is not hard to understand.
  Wares were the things possessed by a seller and
  to house these in a central location meant your
  were storing your wares.getting in new products,
  and shipping out products already stored.

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What is Warehouse ?

• Another important part of maintaining a good
  warehouse is keeping inventory of what products
  are presently in the warehouse, what has been
  shipped and what has been received.

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Warehouse Functions

• Provide temporary storage
• Put together an order
• Serve as a customer service facility
• Protect goods
• Perform value added services
• Inventory

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The Value Chain
Firm Structure
Human Resource Development
Supporting Activities
Technology Development
Procurement

• Inbound
• Logistics

Operations
Outbound Logistics
Marketing and Sales
Services
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Warehouse Functions

• - Warehouse organizes and repackages product
• - Product arrives packaged on a large scale and
  leaves packages on a smaller scale
• The smaller the handling unit, the greater the
  handling cost

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Processes of reorganization of product

• Inbound Processes
• Receiving
• Put away/Storage
• Outbound Processes
• Processing customer orders
• Order-picking
• Checking
• Packing
• Shipping

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Receiving

• Unloading and staging for put away
• Inspection (Sampling and/or 100)
• Scanned for registering to
• Confirm its availability
• Confirm ownership
• Normally, receiving is accounted for about 10 of
  W/H operations cost.

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Put-away

• Before product can be put away, an appropriate
  storage location must be determined
• Where the product is stored is directly related
  to how quick and what cost to retrieve it later

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Put-away

• W/H manager must know at all time that
• Which storage locations are available
• How large they are
• How much weight they can take
• After product is put away, its location must be
  recorded
• Cost of put away is about 15 of W/H operating
  expenses

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Process of customer orders

• On receipt of customer orders the warehouse must
  perform checks such as to verify that inventory
  is available to ship
• The warehouse must produce a pick list to guide
  the order picking
• The order picking include assigning operators and
  sequence of order picking and shipping

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Order Picking

• Order picking account for 55 of warehouse
  operations cost, it can be broken down to
• Traveling 55
• Searching 15
• Extracting 10
• Paper work and other 20
• of total order picking cost

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Order Picking

• Depend on type of storage and retrieval system
• Person-to-item
• Item-to-person
• Manual or ASRS
• Terminology used in order picking operations
• Pick-sheet or pick line
• Pick/visit
• Pick face
• Pick density ( of picks per foot of travel)

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Order Picking

• Flow time is a main indicator for picking
  performance
• Short flow time can lead to better service and
  responsiveness
• Flow time depend on
• how large the unit load, serial or parallel
  pickers
• Number of pickers

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Order Picking

• If the total work to pick and load a truck is
  small, one picker may be assign to each order
• If the orders to pick and load are large or span
  distant region, several pickers are needed to
  shorten the flow time

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Order Picking

• For a warehouse that move a lot of small products
  for each of many customers, such as shipping to
  retail stores, order picking may be organized as
  an assembly line
• The assembly line needs to be balance using some
  line balancing techniques

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Checking and Packing

• Packing can be very labor intensive
• Every item needs to be handled but with minimal
  walking
• Then, checking can be performed simultaneously to
  make sure completeness of order
• Incomplete order leads to return which is
  expensive

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Checking and Packing

• Packing must aim at minimizing broken space when
  shipping
• Also, customers want orders in as few containers
  as possible to avoid excessive handling cost

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Shipping

• Shipping generally handles larger units than
  picking
• Less labor intensive
• Goal is to
• minimize transportation cost
• Protect goods
• Ease load and unloading

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Warehouse Management Systems
-Highly automated system that runs day-to-day
operations of a DC -Controls item putaway,
picking, packing, and shipping -Features transport
ation management order management yard
management labor management warehouse optimization
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A WMS
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Vendor-Managed Inventory
Manufacturers generate orders, not distributors
or retailers Stocking information is accessed
using EDI A first step towards supply chain
collaboration Increased speed, reduced errors,
and improved service
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Warehouse Management System (WMS)

• The main function of WMS are to track all product
  arriving and shipping out
• It most fundamental capability is to record
  receipt of inventory into the warehouse and
  register its shipment out (including financial
  transaction)

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Warehouse Management System (WMS)

• Another important function are
• Ability to do storage allocation
• Routing of material handling equipment
• Track every place that product can be stored
• Known as stock locator system

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Manu Features of WMS

• Basic features
• Appointment scheduling
• Receiving
• Quality assurance
• Put away
• Location tracking
• Work-order management
• Picking
• Packing and consolidating
• Shipping

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Manu Features of WMS

• High-end features
• Cycle counting
• Replenishment
• Yard management
• Labor management
• Value-added service
• Etc.

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Manu Features of WMS

• WMSs are extending their functionality to
  support activities in supply chain both upstream
  and downstream like
• EXE technologies
• Manhattan Associates
• MARC Global System
• Swisslog Software
• etc

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Materials Handling
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Materials Handling

• Material handling is an activity that uses the
  right method to provide the right amount of the
  right material at the right place, at the right
  time, in the right sequence, in the right
  position and at the right cost

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Materials Handling (Cont)

• Systems perspective
• 20-70 of product cost attributed to material
  handling

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Unit Load

• Unit load - number of items or bulk material
  arranged so they can be picked up and delivered
  as one load
• Large or small?
• If large, cost/unit handled decreases
• But, depending upon
• cost of unitizing, de-unitizing

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Unit Load (Cont)

• space required for material handling
• material handling carrier payload
• work-in-process inventory costs
• storage and return of empty pallets or containers
  used to hold the unit load
• smaller unit load may be desired

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Unit Load (Cont)

• Seven steps to design a unit load
• Unit load concept applicable?
• Select the unit load type
• Identify most remote source of load
• Determine farthest practicable destination for
  load

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Unit Load (Cont)

• Establish unit load size
• Determine unit load configuration
• Determine how to build unit load

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Material Handling Device Types

• Conveyors
• Palletizers
• Pallet Lifting Devices
• Trucks
• Robots

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Material Handling Device Types (Cont)

• AGVs
• Jibs, Cranes and Hoists
• Warehouse MHSs

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Conveyors

• Accumulation
• Belt
• Bucket
• Can
• Chain

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Conveyors (Cont)

• Chute
• Gravity
• Pneumatic or vacuum
• Power and free
• Roller

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Conveyors (Cont)

• Screw
• Skid
• Slat
• Tow line
• Trolley
• Wheel

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Trucks

• Hand truck
• Fork-lift truck
• Pallet truck
• Platform truck
• Counterbalanced truck
• Tractor-trailer truck
• AGV

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Robots

• Point-to-point
• Contouring or continuous path
• Walkthrough or teach
• Lead through or teach pendant
• Hydraulic
• Servo-controlled

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MHSs in Action

• Europe Combined Terminals (ECT)
• ECT - one of largest in world and largst in
  Europe
• Goods shipped from and to Europe
• Built on reclaimed land in the North Sea
• Large and Small containers

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MHSs in Action (Cont)

• Trucks wait to be off-loaded by straddle carrier
• Carrier takes container to holding area
• Shipped in approximately 2 days
• Mobile gantry cranes on tracks deposit containers
  in forward area

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MHSs in Action (Cont)

• Mobile gantry cranes hold containers in top four
  corners and deposit on waiting AGVs
• Fleet of AGVs in forward area take containers to
  tower cranes
• Tower cranes deposit load on ship bed
• Procedure reversed for off-loading ship

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AGVs

• Classification of MHS
• Synchronous systems
• Asynchronous systems
• Synchronous systems, e.g. conveyors, used in
  continuous processes or heavy traffic, discrete
  parts environments

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AGVs (Cont)

• Asynchronous systems, e.g., AGV, AS/RS, fork-lift
  trucks, monorails, cranes and hoists used in
  light traffic, discrete parts environments when
  material handling flexibility desired

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Design and Control Problems in AGVSs

• Material flow network
• Location of pick-up/drop-off (P/D) points
• Number and type of AGVs
• AGV Assignments to material transfer requests
• AGV routing and dispatching

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Design and Control Problems in AGVSs (Cont)

• Strategies for resolving route conflicts, so AGV
  throughput rate is maximized, an other costs
  (purchase, maintenance and operating costs of
  AGVs, computer control devices, and the material
  flow network, as well as inventory costs and
  production equipment idle costs incurred due to
  excessive material transfer and wait times), are
  minimized