1、 Warehousing This chapter presents a description of a small, fictitious warehouse that distributes office supplies and some office furniture to small retail stores and individual mail-order customers. The facility was purchased from another company, and it is larger than required for the immediate o
2、peration. The operation, currently housed in an older facility, will move in a few months. The owners foresee substantial growth in their high-quality product lines, so the extra space will accommodate the growth for the next few years. The description of the warehouse is of the planned operation af
3、ter moving into the facility. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the operations of warehouses. Basic function sare described, typical equipment types are illustrated, and operations within departments are presented in some detail so that the reader can understand the relations
4、hips among products, orders, order lines, storage space, and labor requirements. Storage assignment and retrieval strategies are briefly discussed. Evaluation of the planned operation includes turnover, performance, and cost analyses. Additional information can be found in other chapters of this vol
5、ume and in the reference material. Role of the Warehouse in the Supply Chain Warehouses can serve different roles within the larger organization. For example, a stock room serving a manufacturing facility must provide a fast response time. The major activities would be piece (item)picking, carton pi
6、cking, and preparation of assembly kits (kitting). A mail-order retailer usually must provide a great variety of products in small quantities at low cost to many customers. A factory warehouse usually handles a limited number of products in large quantities. A large, discount chain ware house typica
7、lly “pushes” some products out to its retailers based on marketing campaigns, with other products being “pulled” by the store managers. Shipments are oft en full and half truckloads. The Ware house described here is a small, chain warehouse that carries a limited product line for distribution to its
8、 retailers and independent customers. The purpose of the warehouse is to provide the utility of time and place to its customers, both retail in the quantities requested by small retailers and individual customers. Production schedules often result in long runs and large lot sizes. Thus, manufacturer
9、s usually are not able to meet the delivery dates of small retailers and individuals. The warehouse bridges the gap and enables both parties, manufacturer and customer, to operate within their own spheres. Product and Order Descriptions 1. Product Descriptions The products handled include paper prod
10、ucts, pens, staplers, small storage units, other desktop products, electronic products are delivered directly from other distributors and not handled by the warehouse. One would say that the warehouse handles relatively low-value products from the viewpoint of manufacturing cost. ships among these l
11、oad types. Individuals usually request pieces； retailers may also request pieces of slow movers, products that are not in high demand. Retailers usually request fast movers, products that are in high demand, in carton quantities. Bulky products like large desktop storage units may be in high enough
12、demand so that they are sold by the warehouse in pallets. Furniture units are also sold on pallets for ease of movement in the warehouse and in the delivery trucks. shows the number of products to be stored and the number of storage locations needed. The latter issue is discussed in Section The typi
13、cal dimensions of a piece is 10 25 3.5 cm, with a typical volume of 0.875 liters. A carton has typical dimensions of 33 43 30 cm, with a typical volume of 42.6 liters. Thus, a typical carton contains 48.7 pieces. The typical dimension of a pallet is 80 120 140 cm, with the last dimension being and i
14、ndividual. Manufacturers of office supplies and furniture are usually not willing to supply products low-priced media like CD and DVD blanks, book and electronic titles, and office furniture. High-value Products are sold by the warehouse as pieces, cartons, and on pallets. Figure 12.1 shows the rela
15、tion- the height. The pallet base is about 10 cm high, so the typical product volume is 1.25 m3, corresponding to 29.3 cartons. The pallet base allows for pickup by forklift truck from any of the four sides. Table 12.2 summarizes these values. Different products, of course, have different dimensions
16、 and relationships. The conversion factors can vary depending on whether the product is sold mainly in piece, carton, or pallet quantities. We will not introduce further complexity here and use the values given here for determining storage and labor requirements. 2 Order Descriptions There are two t
17、ypes of orders processed at the warehouse. Large orders are placed by the retailers who belong to the same corporation； these are delivered by less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier. Small orders are placed by individuals, and these are delivered by package courier service like United States Postal Servi
18、ce (USPS), United Parcel Service (UPS), and Federal Express (Fed EX). Large orders contain more products and the quantity per product is greater than for small orders. Pallet Pick Operations Full pallet picking is done primarily in the floor storage area and occasionally in the pallet rack area. The
19、se pallets move directly to outbound staging. A forklift truck has the capacity to transport one pallet at a time. Travel within the pallet floor storage area follows the rectilinear distance metric (Francis et al. 1992). Sorting, Packing, Staging, Shipping Operations Pieces and cartons that are pic
20、ked using batch picking must first be sorted by order before further processing. The method of batch picking, described in the following, is designed to facilitate this process without requiring extensive conveyor equipment. In addition, all pieces must be packed into over pack cartons, and these ar
21、e then consolidated with regular (single product) cartons by order. Some cartons and over packs move to outbound staging for package courier services like USPS, UPS, and FedEx. Others move to outbound staging for LTL carrier service. The package courier services load their vehicles manually, and the LTL carriers are loaded by warehouse personnel using either forklift trucks or pallet jacks. Support Operations, Reware housing, Returns Processing
