IMPROVING OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY OF AN SME FURNITURE WAREHOUSE

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the application of warehouse and inventory management methods on an SME furniture warehouse based in Thailand. The company’s warehouse had very little implementation of warehouse management. As sales have been increasing, activities within the warehouse also increases, improvements to the operation are critical to the company’s growth. The objective of this research is to increase the operational efficiency through reducing order picking time and inactive products using lean 5S, order-picking policy, ABC analysis and class-based storage location assignment policy. The methods have proven to significantly improve the operational efficiency of order-picking activity and overall inventory condition by decreasing walking time by 71%, search time by 84%, pick time by 41% and inactive products by 8.25%. This work can serve as a practical guideline to SME warehouses as a method of increasing operational efficiency.