MODIFICATION OF THE ORDER PICKING AND REPLENISHMENT POLICY IN A DISTRIBUTION CENTER
Open Access
- Author:
- Latumena, Anita
- Graduate Program:
- Industrial Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- None
- Committee Members:
- Deborah Jean Medeiros, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Deborah Jean Medeiros, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- replenishment
replenishment optimization
order picking
picking
batched picking
zone based
distribution center
warehouse - Abstract:
- As the global standard to fulfill orders is now expected to be within a 24 hour period, distribution centers have become an important part in the supply chain in order for businesses to stay competitive. A distribution center is important because it is a point where products are consolidated to serve ever-changing customer demand faster and efficiently. The goal of this thesis is to improve productivity by studying and suggesting alternatives to the two most time- consuming activities in a distribution center: order picking and replenishment. The warehouse studied in this paper is a regional distribution center which fulfills orders for laboratory supplies from industries and universities within the United States. In the forward area of the distribution center, customer orders are picked one at a time and replenishments are done concurrently with the order picking. Replenishment sources sometimes are located on a productive or reachable area instead of on the top of the racks. Hence, in the current replenishment procedure, a picker replenishes from a productive area to another productive area, which is inefficient. To improve productivity, the order picking process is modified to batched order picking process and replenishment operation is modified by assigning direct picking from productive replenishment sources. The existing and modified systems are modeled using simulation to estimate the total pick times. The total pick times are compared using two-way ANOVA to identify the effects of the modifications on the two factors, the order picking process and replenishment operation, to the total pick time. The statistical analysis shows significant improvements of the total pick time when these two factors are altered. Based on the analysis, the greatest reduction on the total pick time is achieved when both the order picking process and replenishment operation are modified to batched picking process and direct picking from replenishment.