Warehouse Activity Profiling

Based on Bartholdi & Hackman Chpt 5

Warehouse Activity Profiling

The careful measurement and statistical analysis of the warehouse activity. The process of understanding the customer orders that drive the system Sifting through historical data for opportunities and insights that might confer advantage.

SKU data Order data Location data

Summary statistics

WAP

Distributions Structural Characterizations, e.g., prevailing patterns/trends relations dominant elements

SKU-related data (distributed over a set of data-bases)

SKU ID text description product family (product families are defined for each industry and suggest certain types of storage and handling) Addresses of storage location in the warehouse (zone, aisle, section, shelf, position on the shelf) For each location storing the SKU:
storage unit physical dimensions of the storage unit (length, width, height, weight) scale of the selling unit number of selling units per storage unit

Date the SKU was introduced (for assessing growth of the corresponding activity) Max inventory level by month or week (for assessing space needs)

Order-related data (coming from sales-transactions databases)

Order ID SKU ID Customer ID Any needs for special handling Date/time order was picked Quantity ordered Quantity shipped

Remark: This set of data can be really large (the corresponding datafile might exceed the 100M) => Needs processing through some specialized Database software.

Data Mining
Handling a set of tables in a relational database management system Table rows: Records with instances of the object/entity stored in that table (e.g., SKUs, order lines, etc.) Table columns: Attributes characterizing the considered entity Typical functionality involved in data-mining
sorting the rows of a table by a certain attribute selecting a subset of rows of a table, s.t. all isolated entities satisfy a certain property counting distinct entries in a table meeting a certain condition performing joins, i.e., combining the information one table with that of another table to create a new table with a different set of attributes graphing the results

SQL: Structured Query Language

Some basic summary statistics

Order-related
average number of SKUs involved (work and storage complexity) average number of orders shipped per day (volume of activity) average number of lines (SKUs) per order (picking complexity) average number of units per line seasonalities (Seasonal Indices: What percentage of a cycle corresponds to a period in the cycle - temporal distribution of the work)

Facility-related data
area of the warehouse average number of shipments received per day(the backend activity) average rate of introduction of new SKUs (operational stability) average number of SKUs in the warehouse (volume and scope of operations) distribution of the personnel to the various activities (labor-related costs and opportunities)

A closer characterization of the warehouse workload

What drives the entire warehouse activity is the order/pick lines! Need to understand how these lines are distributed among
SKUs product families storage locations warehouse zones time

Activity analysis Results are communicated as

discrete distributions Pareto curves, i.e., cumulative distributions where the items on the horizontal axis are arranged in a decreasing order w.r.t. the corresponding value of the distribution. other plots (e.g., birds eye view for characterizing location activity)

Graphing the results of the Activity Analysis

Discrete Distribution
% picks
1.0

zone

Pareto curve
% picks
1.0

10K

20K

SKUs

Pareto Effect and ABC Analysis

Pareto Effect: A small percentage of the considered entities account for the largest fraction of the activity (20/80 rule) ABC analysis: Exploit the Pareto effects in order to classify the considered entities into (typically three: A, B and C) categories, such that
the entities in the first category are the ones responsible for most of the activity, and therefore, more closely managed; the entities in the second category account for most of the remaining part, and therefore, are moderately important; the entities in the third category are the largest bulk responsible for only a small part of the activity, and therefore, insignificant.

Remark: ABC classification of the same set of entities will differ from activity to activity (c.f. Bartholdi & Hackman, Tables 5.1 - 5.5)

Work Patterns and their Implications

Distribution of lines per order: What percentage of orders have a single line, two lines, etc. (Reveals possibilities for batching and/or zoning) Distribution of picks by order-size: What fraction of picks comes from single-line orders, two-line orders, etc. (reveals whether most work is generated by small or large orders, shipping activity) Distribution of families/zones per order: What fraction of orders involves a single family/zone, two families/zones, etc. (identifies coupling which can be exploited by the picking process) Family pairs analysis / order-crossings (for zones): identify pairs of families/zones with correlated demand (this correlation should be exploited by putting items in each pair close to each other)

Case Study: Profiling the Activity of a Wholesales Distributor of Office Products

Problem description:
http://www.isye.gatech.edu/people/faculty/John_Bartholdi/wh/book/profile/projects/projects.html

Problem Solution:
http://www.isye.gatech.edu/~spyros/courses/IE6202/WAP-cs.pdf