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Abstract
Purpose - With the current interest in all aspects of supply chain management, the demands on warehousing have changed significantly within the past few years. In an attempt to meet this challenge, warehouses have become more concerned with proper slotting and storage techniques. This paper seeks to evaluate slotting measures and storage assignment strategies in a simulated manual bin-shelving (low level picker-to-part) warehouse in terms of travel distance and the fulfillment time to complete an order.
Design/methodology/approach - The approach utilises Monte Carlo simulation of a manual bin-shelving pick area.
Findings - The results illustrate that popularity, turnover, and cube-per-order index (COI) performed best among slotting measures. Several new storage assignment strategies utilizing the concept of "golden zone" picking, which slots high demand stock-keeping units (SKUs) at the height between the picker's waist and shoulders, were introduced. Results from the simulation study show that the golden zone storage assignment strategies generated significant savings in order fulfillment time compared to storage policies that ignore the golden zone concept.
Originality/value - Provides an evaluation of slotting measures and storage assignment strategies that generated significant savings in order fulfillment time.
Keywords Warehousing, Monte Carlo simulation, Order picking
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Today's warehouses have to execute more, smaller transactions, handle and store more products, offer more product and service customization, and provide more value-added services, while having less time to process orders and with less margin for error. While many firms try to solve these challenges with more technology, a better solution may result from a careful analysis of customer orders and products in the warehouse. Frazelle (2002) notes that most warehouses are spending 10-30 percent more per year than they should because it is estimated less than 15 percent of the (stock-keeping units) SKUs are properly slotted. Slotting is the assignment of items or SKUs to warehouse storage locations.
Before slotting is performed, the warehouse must first be profiled. SKU activity profiling provides the information necessary to slot the warehouse, including the number of requests per SKU, the total quantity shipped per period per SKU, and the cube (volumetric) requirements per SKU. The practitioner literature (Franco, 2001; Saenz, 2000, 2001) states the importance of slotting but gives no tangible information as to how to...