Determining the size and design of flow type and u-type warehouses

Abstract

Nowadays, fluctuations of costs and costumer demands make it harder for firms to respond the market conditions effectively and cause customer and profit loss. In modern supply chain process, products must be delivered to customers in the shortest possible delivery time and this delivery time must be procured with a minimum number of stocks. Distribution for small amounts of products in a wide variety must be more frequently and more rapidly. This time constraint has a direct impact on the distribution and warehousing management. Although the importance of warehouses is emphasized in the literature, determining the size of warehouses is not mentioned enough. In this context, determining the size for a new flow type warehouse and a new u-type warehouse has been tried in this paper. A warehouse design which minimizing the total picker distance has been studied analytically with taking the number of doors into account. As a result of the calculations, different interior layouts have been proposed for the flow type warehouses and u-type warehouses. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 8th International Strategic Management Conference