Warehouse design framework

A warehouse design framework for order processing and materials handling improvement - Case Etra Oy

Logistics
Master 's thesis
Tommy Blomqvist
2010

Department of Business Technology
Aalto University
School of Economics

Aalto University School of Economics
Master’s Thesis
Tommy Blomqvist

Abstract
18.11.2010

A WAREHOUSE DESIGN FRAMEWORK FOR ORDER PROCESSING AND
MATERIALS HANDLING IMPROVEMENT – CASE ETRA OY

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Warehouses function as node points in the supply chain linking the material flows between the supplier and the customer As a result of the highly competitive market environment companies are continuously forced to improve their warehousing operations. Many companies have also customized their value proposition to better meet customer demands, which has led to changes in the role of warehouses. In such conditions improvement of order processing and materials handling can bring significant cost savings and at the same time increase customer value. The purpose of this study is to develop a warehouse design framework that supports systematic decision making, and show that this framework can be used to reduce order processing cycle times and improve the overall performance of a warehouse.
DATA AND METHODOLOGY
The empirical part of this thesis was conducted as a case study in a Finnish technical wholesales company. Data for the study was collected from two primary sources. The first source was a review of the company’s order history.
The material was profiled to determine ordering patterns of products and to understand order processing needs. The second source of research material came from a participant-observation of warehouse employees. This allowed assessing the overall distribution of time between different warehousing activities and identifying most critical bottlenecks in the warehousing process.
RESULTS
The results of this study show that even simple planning methodologies can
provide

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