Simulation Modelling of Warehouse Capacity Re-allocation to Improve Inbound Logistics Performance: A Study Case (original) (raw)

A simulation model to improve warehouse operations

2007 Winter Simulation Conference, 2007

Warehouse or distribution centre managers have to decide how to collect the products to fulfill customers requests but also where to locate the products (SKUs) and how much space to allocate to each of them. Moreover, they have to deploy replenishment strategies to guarantee the reliability of their own stocks. These are challenging decisions because of their level of complexity and their high impact on the centre performance in terms of both its throughput and the operation costs. In particular, the goal of this work is to evaluate whether specific strategies to share the storage space could lead to reduce the operation costs while keeping the service level as high as possible. To this end, this paper develops a discrete event simulation model of the logistic operations at a real high throughput warehouse which handles more than 12 millions of cases annually. Preliminary results show that potential economies may be achieved by reducing the number of stock-outs at the picking area where customer orders are collected.

Simulation modeling of a warehouse logistics department of a medium-sized company

2021

The article gives a simulation model of a warehouse and logistics department of a medium-sized company. Based on the pre-specified workload, the following characteristics of the department are established, such as the load of the warehouses, the size of the queues for import / export of goods and the waiting time in them, the volume of the warehouse and the number of service personnel (warehouse workers). The model can be easily changed for various similar situations.

An efficiency improvement in warehouse operation using simulation analysis

IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2017

In general, industry requires an efficient system for warehouse operation. There are many important factors that must be considered when designing an efficient warehouse system. The most important is an effective warehouse operation system that can help transfer raw material, reduce costs and support transportation. By all these factors, researchers are interested in studying about work systems and warehouse distribution. We start by collecting the important data for storage, such as the information on products, information on size and location, information on data collection and information on production, and all this information to build simulation model in Flexsim® simulation software. The result for simulation analysis found that the conveyor belt was a bottleneck in the warehouse operation. Therefore, many scenarios to improve that problem were generated and testing through simulation analysis process. The result showed that an average queuing time was reduced from 89.8% to 48.7% and the ability in transporting the product increased from 10.2% to 50.9%. Thus, it can be stated that this is the best method for increasing efficiency in the warehouse operation.

Managing warehouse inventory: A simulation based case study

2016

Simulation is the imitation of a real-world operation or process over time. Warehouse inventory management played an important role in improving customer service and reducing stock outs. Managing warehouse inventory is a challenging task and to address this challenge, we use simulation application in warehouse inventory management. The purpose of this paper is to use simulation in managing inventory of A Building Materials Trading Company in United Arab Emir-ates (UAE). Firstly, we will develop a model to improve average inventory level, average lost sales, and percentage of customer's dissatisfaction for the main component in the company which is cement. Secondly, we verify and validate our developed model using Arena simulation software. Finally, some recommendations regarding reorder point, batch size and target stock will be given to improve overall warehouse inventory management system.

Analysis of a Warehouse Management System by Means of Simulation Experiments

2011

The supply chains for perishable products are nowad ays affected by significant wastes and losses. Their management hence requires optimized approaches in order to remove such inefficiencies. In particular optimized warehouse management policies is a well established research topic which has been recently enriched with specific formulations for deteriorati ng stocks and shelf life based picking rules. In such context the proposed research aims at investigating the opt imal warehouse management policy, taking into account th e effects of uncertainty by means of simulation and approaching the effect of optimal picking rules. In the proposed approach, on the basis of a Weibull deterioration process, the optimal order quantity i s calculated taking into account the deterioration co st, and the performance of the system is analyzed taking in to account the inherent variability in the quality of the products entering the cold chain. The numerical application developed confirms the effecti...

Simulation-based Performance Improvement of a Defense Logistics Warehouse

2012

Warehouses play a critical role in supply chains. They serve as a vital link between manufacturers and customers. In this study, we investigate performance of the largest warehouse (Eastern Distribution Center EDC) of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) located in New Cumberland, PA and propose a near optimum design for the receiving area of the warehouse to improve its performance. First, we develop a simulation model of the system. Second, we interface an optimization model with the simulation in order to optimize the number of people working at the induction stations. In the optimization model, our goal is to minimize the average cycle time of a material type. Last, we re-design the existing system based on results from the optimization. The simulation and the optimization models are developed through the use of ARENA 13.9 and OptQuest.

Optimisation of Logistics Processes Using Simulation Tools

Multidisciplinary Aspects of Production Engineering

Optimization of production logistics processes through the use of simulation tools brings a lot of benefits to a production company, and thus significantly reduces production costs. Increasing competition resulting from the use of production automation to increase productivity has increased the complexity of production systems that can only be analysed by simulation. Production logistics performs management functions such as planning, motivating, organising and controlling. It does not deal with technological processes, but the organisation of physical delivery and displacement of components and information in the system. An important feature of production logistics is combining supply logistics with distribution logistics. If the production logistics is properly organised, it provides access to all materials and components of a given product during the implementation of a specific order. Simulation tools ensure continuity and rhythm of production after it is started, as well as con...

A Simulation-Based Decision Making Tool for Key Warehouse Resources Selections

Managers of manual storing and picking warehouses have to decide how much labor resources to use and how much space to have. These decisions are crucial since they directly affect the warehouse performance in terms of throughput and operational costs. This paper presents a simulation-based tool for selecting key WH resources considering both generic and case-based WH characteristics. The simulation experiments are designed in order to simultaneously considering multi input effects. The results show that the two factor effect of simultaneously adopting the volume-based storage policy and changing the manner of using the gating system generates the optimum resources selection.

A Simulation-Based Decision Making Tool for Key Warehouse Resource Selections

Managers of manual storing and picking warehouses have to decide how much labor resources to use and how much space to have. These decisions are crucial since they directly affect the warehouse performance in terms of throughput and operational costs. This paper presents a simulation-based tool for selecting key WH resources considering both generic and case-based WH characteristics. The simulation experiments are designed in order to simultaneously considering multi input effects. The results show that the two factor effect of simultaneously adopting the volume-based storage policy and changing the manner of using the gating system generates the optimum resources selection.