This is a project to accompany the course and the book Warehouse
& Distribution Science, at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, by John J. BARTHOLDI, III and Steven T. HACKMAN. Everyone
is welcome to use the book and materials for educational purposes, as
long as all copyrights remain intact.
The company and the distribution center
Read about the company and see the distribution
center here.
Concerns at Dos Pinos
These concerns hold both for the current warehouse and for the
expanded warehouse, for which construction is now beginning.
Space utilization
Dos Pinos is concerned that they may have poor utilization of
expensive chilled space. They also worry about excessive travel by
order pickers because pallet rack does not offer attractive sku
density. Would it be better to pick low-volume products from carton
flow rack? This would allow many more skus to be presented within a
small area and so reduce travel. How much flow rack would be
appropriate? What would be the estimated costs of picking and
replenishment?
Could the same thing be accomplished without carton flow rack? What
would be the implications of storing multiple skus in the same pallet
position? By storing crates with the narrow face forward, crates can be
stored 6 across and 2 deep. By storing with the wide face forward,
crates can be stored 4 across and 3 deep.
Restocking less-than-pallet quantities may present some challenges.
If pallets in upper levels are to be broken down, then a high-lift
person-aboard truck is required. Also, there could be safety problems
in having loose pallets stored high in an area that is prone to
earthquakes.
Slotting
Develop recommendations for reslotting the carton-pick-from-pallet
regions.
Order-picking
Is the current pick path — down one side of the aisle and back
the other side — the best? Is there any advantage to using a
“Z-pick”?
Data
The company data is copyrighted and proprietary. You may use it for
the purposes of this course only. If you would like to use it for
something else, please contact me to discuss.
- skus.xls is an item master and
includes the following fields.
- storekey: A code to identify the zone for the sku. 01 =
ambient, 02 = frozen, 03 = refrigerated
- skuid: A unique identifier for each sku
- packkey: A compressed expression of how the product is packed.
All have the form 1-m-n. 1 refers to the unit or each; m tells
how many eaches are contained in a carton; n tells how many
eaches are contained in a pallet. For example, sku 016028 has
packkey 1-25-1050, which means that there are 25 eaches per
carton and 1,050 eaches per pallet (and so 1050/25 = 42 cartons
per pallet).
- Weight per unit (each): in kilograms
- Case type: “loose” means that an each is a carton.
For example, a large container of ice cream is an each and the
next larger unit of measure is a pallet.
- Units/Pallet: Number of eaches on a pallet
- Units/Case: Number of eaches in a carton
- Carton length, width, height: in meters
- picks.xls is a snapshot of the
picks between 29 November and 04 December. If the total truck order
required, for example, 28 liters of milk, this would have been
broken into two pick lines, one pick line for a carton of 25 liters
plus one pick line for 3 eaches (liters). Thus milk would have
appeared on such an order more than one time.
- storekey: Zone
- ADDDATE: Date of pick
- ORDERKEY: Unique ID of this truck order
- SKU: Item requested
- UOM: What unit-of-measure is to be picked. Code: 1
= pallet; 2 = case; 3 = inner pack; 6 = eaches
- UOMQTY: How many of the UOM to be picked
- QTY: Number of eaches contained in this pick
- LOC: Location from which the sku is picked. Every sku has a
single location from which less-than-pallet quantities are picked;
and every pick location holds a pallet. The first letter of each
address refers to the zone containing this location: A =
“ambiente” (ambient); R = “refrigerado”
(refrigerated); C = “congelado” (frozen).
- Layout of the warehouse:
