What is Activity Profiling Warehouse Activity Profiling is

What is Activity Profiling? Warehouse Activity Profiling is the analysis of historical sales transaction data for the purposes of projecting warehouse activity and determining storage mode, physical layout, work flow processes, and labor and equipment requirements.

Data INV. MASTER Inventory Snapshots Average Inventory Levels ORDER MASTER ITEM MASTER Order Header Order Detail SKU Number Description Item Cube Pieces Per Cases Per Pallet Division Product Group Item Weight Item Ordered Qty Unit of Measure 2

Developing Profiling Reports & Graphs STEP #1: CONSOLIDATE & CALCULATE Inventory Master Order Data Item Master Data STEP #2: ANALYZE (Sort / Rank) & PRESENT 3

Storage Driven Picking Driven How Do You Design a Warehouse? • Two Ways To Design a Warehouse – Storage Driven Approach via Cube Analysis – Picking Driven Approach via Order Analysis

What is the Storage Driven Approach to Design? • PART I: Define Your Storage Zones • PART II: Design Your Forward Pick Areas • PART III: Define How You Will Plan & Pick Orders

Designing a Warehouse Part I Define Your Storage Zones

Categorize Items By Cubic Ft of Inventory Calculate the cubic feet of storage that each item requires and then assign it to an “inventory container” of the appropriate size. Pallet Rack Bin Shelving Multi-Pallet Drive In Rack Drawers . 125 1. 5 40. 0 320. 0 Cubic Feet of Storage Required For An Item

Develop an Inventory Container Graph Drawers Now you can begin to think about what storage modes might be reasonable candidates for the merchandise you are storing…

Develop a Pick Size Classification Scheme Next develop a classification scheme for picks based on the size of the pick. Usually designers will use pallet”, “case”, and “piece” pick sizes Piece Pick Case Pick Pallet Pick

Assess the Activity In Each Inventory Container Assess the activity in the larger containers to see if there is the possibility that some of the items should be moved to a forward pick area. The decision will be driven by the # of such picks in the container and the overall size of the larger container storage area. Move these to Case Storage Piece Pick Activity Curve

Designing a Warehouse Reserve Areas Part II Define Your Forward Pick Areas

General Process for Forward Pick Design • Questions that Must Be Answered About the Forward Pick Area(s): • How many forward pick areas do you need? • Determine how many SKUs should go on the pick line • Removing unusual SKUs from the pick line • Sequence the SKUs on each pick line

You will likely have multiple forward pick areas For each Pick Size you need to decide if there a lot of picks associated with a relatively small subset of the items. If so, you will likely want to set up a forward pick area for that Pick Size. 80% of Picks from 20% of Items These Items should go into a forward pick area.

Determining How Many Items in Forward Pick Generally to determine how many items you are going to put in the forward pick area you look at the tradeoff between adding an item into the forward pick area and the % of additional orders you are then able to complete in that area. 79 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 88 92 92 95 98 98 100 68 63 52 44 33 25 22 80 80 60 60 40 40 20 20 0 0 160 84 100% 140 90 100% 120 99 97 95 93 92 90 83 100 33 46 52 67 73 79 81 80 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Trade Off: Space Utilization and Efficiency 60 % Days Picked 40 % Case Picks Filled 20 Number of SKUs % Days Picked % Case Picks Filled

Determining How Many Items in Forward Pick 90

Designing a Warehouse Part III Define How To Plan & Pick Orders

Wave Planning & Picking Approaches Daily Order Pool Orders of this “type” get released to the floor and picked in the following manner every X hours Orders of this “type” get released to the floor and picked in the following manner every Y hours While designers make assumptions at the start of a design about how the bulk of the orders will be released and picked, the details behind their thinking are not usually flushed out until the end of the project. They often also wait until the end to define the planning and picking approaches for the exceptional orders.

Ways in which you can process orders differently • Order Selection Criteria & Groups Forced Upon You By The Business Efficiency Opportunity – Rush vs Regular Orders – Geography (West Coast vs East Coast) – Orders Requiring Personalized Merchandise – Single vs Multi-Line Orders – Types of Picks Needed to Complete Order – Order Cube (Sm Pkg vs LTL vs TL)

Assess the Significance of Single Unit Orders Units/Order as a Percentage of Total Orders 45% of all Orders are single unit orders. One of the greatest opportunities to improve warehouse efficiency is choosing a different mechanism for picking single unit orders from multi-unit orders.

Assess the significance of grouping by area Reserve (Pallet) Area Orders Completed By Area Case Forward Pick Area Piece Forward Pick Area Orders that require merchandise coming from different storage areas within the warehouse may need to be picked differently.

Deciding on a Picking Approach Sorting Picks at End of Tour Order #2 Single Order Picking Order #1 Multi-Order Picking Batch Picking After the different groups of orders have been identified, the designer has to make a decision about how each group of orders will be picked.

How Will Orders in Forward Pick Be Picked? Order #3 Order #2 Good candidates for Multi Order Picking Order #1 Multi-Order Picking Cart

Deciding on a Picking Medium Label Picking Radio Frequency (RF) Barcode Picking Voice Picking For each picking approach you need to decide on a mechanism for how picks will be communicated to pickers. Pick To Light

How Do You Plan & Pick Different Orders Order Group Pick Method Pick Medium Multi-Order Picking RF Terminals Batch Picking Labels Small Cube Multi-Line Orders Single Line Orders

Summary of Warehouse Design Process • PART I: Define Your Storage Zones • PART II: Design Your Forward Pick Areas • PART III: Define How You Will Plan & Pick Orders

Observations • Every descriptive tool or technique seems to be based on a specific “need” • Profiling/design is less about “describing” an “as is” warehouse, than about saying how it “should have been” • It’s hard to integrate the different descriptive tools and techniques • Can we build a comprehensive, computational “description” from which all the different “needs” can be met?

n i a om D s n I e c n a t e c n e r l e f e Re od Process. M Schema Model

AMPL, AIMS, GAMS, and other “modeling languages” incorporate a reference model for the domain of optimization models, and are used to create instances of optimization models.

Can reference models be developed for the domain of discrete event logistics systems, or for subsets of the domain, e. g. , warehouses, factories, and supply chains?