Warehouse design for an automotive raw materials supplier

Abstract

The case-study company faced limited space situation. The company decided to uninstall the temporary warehouses and locate products in two permanent warehouses. The objective of this research is to design the layouts of the two permanent warehouses so that the space can be efficiently used and the total picking distance is low. The past data, Invoice Data and Stock Data, are used for developing layouts designing processes. This research involves collecting Product Size Data for calculating required space for the products.

There are two phases in layout designing process. First phase is product category grouping. This phase categorises product categories into two groups for the two warehouses. The second phase is layout designing. The layout of the two warehouses and location of products are designed. According to company requirement and policies, adapted Class-Based Turnover Assignment is adopted in order to design the layouts for two warehouses. Layouts of the warehouses are designed, analysed, and evaluated. The best layouts give the best trade-off between quantitative results, i.e., total picking distance and the remaining space, and qualitative results, i.e., usability and product suitability. The designed layouts are applied in the case-study company. This research contributes the systematic and practical layout designing method. The developed method is flexible and can be adopted to other layout designing.