Warehousing and Inventory Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Warehousing and Inventory Management - Essay Example Traditional warehousing and inventory management processes need to be replaced with modern automated electronic systems to remain competitive. The process of warehouse and inventory management involves recording and tracking of materials on a quantity and value basis (Tompkins, J.A. and Smith, J.D., 1998). Warehousing and inventory management includes all the process for planning, entry, and documentation of goods movements. Warehouse Management Processes cover warehouse-internal movements and storage of materials. Planning a new warehouse requires some basic decisions. Before starting planning you need to increase available space to its optimum level by using some basic common sense such as getting rid of any junk equipment or goods that is not required to be stored, using JIT deliveries and shorter runs to reduce inventories and use of racks (Tompkins, J.A. and Smith, J.D., 1998, David E. Mulcahy, 1993). All successful warehouse layouts must accomplish the following objectives, regardless of material being stored: Warehouse space planning should be done keeping in mind the nature of inventory. For example you have to design deep rows if your warehouse is intended to store large quantities of few SKUs and you need to plan shallow rows with many faces if you are going to store small quantities of many SKUs. Planning aisle width depends on your decisions such as the type of trucks you will be using and priority among time and space. Aisle width should be according to width of lift trucks used, it should allow free movements of truck. Planning Rows: Planning rows also depends upon the size of lift trucks used. Space between rows should allow a free movement while saving space. Planning Docks: You should take extra care for planning docks as these are busiest part of warehouse operation. Number and placing of the docks depends upon the estimation of how many lift trailers will be handled and of what sizes. Following figure (source: Askin and Standridge) shows a basic ideal lay out: Systematic Layout Planning It is a manual design methodology developed by Muther (Richard Muther, 2004). Following diagram shows various steps of a systematic layout planning: The basic steps of this method are: Data collection (type of goods, Quantity of each product to be produced, Routing for each product, and the Schedule of delivery) and Flow Analysis to identify in and out of goods. It considers quantity of material flow, as well as overall flow lines that could be better in the implementation of departments. Quantitative analysis: analysis of quantifiable factors such as flow costs. Quantitative analysis is done using relationship diagrams. Relationship Diagram: these diagrams are used to quantify relation between source and various destination of delivery. It combines quantitative and qualitative analysis. Relationship diagrams are used for efficient layout planning (Maida Napolitano, 2003). Relationship diagram is the quantitative matrix containing the level of interaction