Warehouse Management Principles

Warehouse Management

• Warehouse storage and Layout: Key considerations for effective warehouse storage involve optimizing space utilization and accessibility.

• Problem-Warehouse Location: A farm implements dealer is comparing three potential warehouse locations (Charlotte, NC; Atlanta, GA; and Columbia, SC) based on fixed costs, variable costs, and increased transportation costs. Calculating the total cost per month for each location given 800 units to handle per month, Charlotte has the lowest total cost.

• Storage Policies: Randomized or Floating Storage: This storage policy allows for flexible allocation of incoming goods, where the storage or retrieval person decides the location, resulting in potentially uneven warehouse area utilization. Management policies can include specific rules such as closest-open-space, farthest-open-space, longest available open space, or truly random open space.

• Storage Policies: Dedicated Storage: This assigns specific locations for each SKU (Stock Keeping Unit). Products can be allocated based on popularity (highest average orders per day), or based on Cube per order (ratio of a product's storage space requirements to its popularity).

• Problem: storage policies: A warehouse with 8 aisles, each with a capacity of 40,000 cubic feet, needs to allocate seven product types. Allocations should consider popularity and CPO (Cube per order) criteria.

• Problem: Storage Policies: Data is presented to solve a storage policy problem. Table shows product information like Item Size (cubic feet), Expected orders per year, average Inventory.

• Waiting Line Management: Measures of system performance include average number of customers waiting, and how long an arrival will have to wait for service. In waiting line decisions, the primary trade-off is the cost of having too many employees (cost of service or idle time) vs. the cost of not having enough employees (cost of waiting).

• Queuing Model: A table lists symbols used in infinite-source models, including arrival rate, service rate per server, average number of customers waiting, customers in the system, etc.

• Introduction (Basic relationship): Formulae for calculating the average number of customers in the system, average number of customers waiting for service, and average number of customers being served, given the service rate and arrival rates. Arrival rate and service rate must have the same units.

• Waiting Line Formula: Formulas for calculating the average number in the waiting line, probability of zero units, and probability of units, given arrival and service rates.

• Problem- Waiting line: Problem focuses on finding system utilization, average number of customers waiting for service, and average wait time for service for a single server, with given arrival rate and service rate.

This quiz covers essential principles of warehouse management, including effective storage layouts, location cost analysis, and various storage policies. Test your knowledge on optimizing warehouse operations and the implications of different storage strategies.