Case Study Of Warehousing

i. Type of goods to be handled: Goods controlled can comprise raw materials, work in progress, spare parts, packaging materials and finished goods. Subject to material types, sizes, weights, product lives and other features, special requirements for temperature and humidity may also have to be met and all of these will affect the sort of warehouse and technology level. ii. Type of facility, size and location: The kind of operations, design capability, size and location of the warehouse will all be affected, if not directly determined, by its exact role and location in the supply chain, and the position, capability and location of any other amenities in the chain. The client base, quantity of inventory, the necessity for inventory reduction, time determination in the supply chain and the complete service levels should all be taking into consideration when identifying on the type, size and location of the warehouse.

In terms of cost, it was estimated by Rushton et al, (2000) that warehousing makes up between 2% and 5% of the cost of sales of a corporation and with current improved corporate stressing on Return on Assets, minimizing warehousing costs has develop into an imperative business issue. In recent times and considering the huge and vociferous competitive international business environment, countless number of firms are automating their uncomplicated warehousing functions to achieve the growth in throughput rates or inventory turns required for their warehousing operations to be cost effective. At the same time, sustained stress on customer service aggravates the dilemma of warehouse managers looking for ways to reduce costs and improve customer service at the same time (Frazelle, 2001).

2.4 General warehouse operations ...

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...r picking is the procedure for retrieving products according to a precise request. The process of picking an order is performed manually or automatically and is guided by an order, which specifies the required products and the quantities. Orders can be single order picking or in batches. Two policies for picking exist pick and sort (sequential), and sort while pick (simultaneous). Precise approximations of the role order picking plays in the general costs varies from 50-75% of total operating costs (Petersen et al., 2004), to 65% of general cost and 50% of the staff of a warehouse (Strack et al., 2010). Approximately 65% of total costs is equal to what Petersen et al. (1999) and Coyle, Bardi and Langley (1992) propose. Van den Berg et al. (1999) detected the costs among UK companies a somewhat smaller (share of 60%), while Tompkins et al. (2003) even keep it at 55%.