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

ORDER MASTER

ITEM MASTER

Inventory Snapshots Average Inventory Levels

Order Header Order Detail

Item Ordered Qty Unit of Measure

SKU Number Description Item Cube Pieces Per Case Cases Per Pallet Division Product Group Item Weight

Developing Profiling Reports & Graphs

STEP #1: CONSOLIDATE & CALCULATE
Inventory Master Order Data

Data
Item Master Data

STEP #2: ANALYZE (Sort / Rank) & PRESENT

Rank 1 2 3 4

Item 355 138SA 353 SW95A

Number Total % Of Of Order Quantity Total Lines Ordered Volume 1895 1820 1734 1669 8971 7238 6630 5266 0.5742% 0.4633% 0.4244% 0.3371%

Cumulativ # Pick Daily Pick e Volume Days Frequency 0.574% 1.038% 1.462% 1.799% 57 57 57 57 33.25 31.93 30.42 29.28

Storage 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

Picking Driven

 PART I:

What is the Storage Driven Approach to Design?

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

Drawers

Multi-Pallet Drive In Rack

.125

1.5

40.0

320.0

Cubic Feet of Storage Required For An Item

Develop an Inventory Container Graph

Inventory Container Graph
25000 20000
# of SKUs

Drawers

15000

10000 5000 0 0.125 1.5 8 Cubic Feet of Storage Needed 40 320

Now you can begin to think about what storage modes might be reasonable candidates for the merchandise you are storing

Developclassification Size for picks based on the size of the pick. a Pick scheme Classification Scheme Next develop a
Usually designers will use pallet, case, and piece pick sizes

Piece Pick

Case Pick

Pallet Pick

Assess the Activity In Each Inventory Container

Inventory Container Graph
25000 20000

15000 10000 5000 0

0.125

1.5 8 40 Cubic Feet of Storage Needed

320

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.

# of SKUs

Move these to Case Storage

Piece Picks Within the Pallet Inventory Area

1200
# of Picks/ Day

Piece Pick Activity Curve

1000 800 600 400 200 0

5 15 25 35 45 55 65 75 85

Cummulative # of SKU's

95

Designing a Warehouse
Reserve Areas

Part II

Define Your Forward Pick Areas

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 are 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.
Order Completion Analysis By Size of Pick

80% of Picks from 20% of Items

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Full Case Orders Broken Case Orders Overall

% Orders Complete

% 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.
Number of SKUs 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 % Case Picks Filled 33 46 52 67 73 79 81 88 92 92 95 98 98 100 % Days Picked 99 97 95 93 92 90 83

Trade Off: Space Utilization and Efficiency

100% 80 60 40 20 100% 80 60 40 20

90

84

79
68 63 52 44 33 25 22

0
20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Number of SKUs
% Days Picked % Case Picks Filled

Determining How Many Items in Forward Pick

Rank Item Days Shipped (Out of 104) 104 104 104 104 104 104 103 103 103 103 103 103 % Of Frequency (By Day) 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 99.0% 99.0% 99.0% 99.0% 99.0% 99.0% Case Picks 20045 10757 4732 3212 507 14350 16270 16173 8208 5385 5082 3345 % Of Total Cummulative Case Picks Case Picks (541,786) 3.6998% 1.9855% 0.8734% 0.5929% 0.0936% 2.6486% 3.0030% 2.9851% 1.5150% 0.9939% 0.9380% 0.6174% 3.6998% 5.6853% 6.5587% 7.1515% 7.2451% 9.8938% 12.8968% 15.8819% 17.3969% 18.3908% 19.3288% 19.9463%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

S118R S12DC S23DC 522X SP2I 2091I 3232W 3232I SPT8W SP8I SP8W P8I

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
100%

. Cumulative % of Orders

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

45% of all Orders are single unit orders.

Units Per Order

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

10%
% Pick Lines % Orders

Mixed
Case Forward Pick Area

20%

30%

Full Case Only

25% 60%

Piece Forward Pick Area

Broken Case Only

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

55% 60% 70%

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 Order #1

Single Order Picking

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?

Multi Line Order Cube Order #3
80% 70%

75%

Order #2

% of Total Orders

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Good candidates for Multi Order Picking

10% 0.5 1

5%
Order #1

5% 8

3% 32

1% 64

Multi-Order Picking Cart

Order Cube (Cu Ft)

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

Small Cube Multi-Line Orders

Multi-Order Picking

RF Terminals

Single Line Orders

Batch Picking

Labels

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 Its 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?

Schema

Process

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?