Industrial engineering investigates storage facilities as part of process analysis for productivity and cost reduction.
Storage is an operation captured in the flow process chart and is one of the five standard operations included in the flow process chart. Storage facilities will be for work-in-process on the shop floor, raw materials, finished goods, tools, inspection gauges, jigs and fixtures etc. Storing in appropriate bins and drawers can result in quick pick up and delivery of items from the store. It can reduce the operator or helper time wasted in waiting at the store.
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Storage and Warehouse System - Process Improvement - Flow Process Chart Based Industrial Engineering - Module Lessons
Writing this lesson turns out to be a difficult exercise. Books on Motion and Time Study, that discuss process charts do not have content on this topic. There is need to collect more materials and develop a more clear content one that especially focuses on the flow process chart based process improvement. But to reach that goal, the available materials are to be identified, read, consolidate in a loose way first.
There is a need to distinguish between plant level facilities planning and facilities industrial engineering and process improvement industrial engineering based on studies based on process charts and related information. In process industrial engineering the focus is on process chart based industrial engineering and the basic knowledge of the processes (theoretical) involved in each of the five operations in the flow process chart. Processing, Inspection, Transport, Warehouse and Production Planning and Scheduling (Temporary Delays). Facilities planning and industrial engineering may be included in the Process IE for the present. Or it could be added as an additional module.
Going (1911) on Stores
Richard L. Shell on Warehouse Industrial Engineering
Summary of CHAPTER 9.5 (Maynard Handbook 5th Edition)
PLANNING AND CONTROL OF SERVICE OPERATIONS
Richard L. Shell, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio
Introduction
Storage and warehousing operations are a critical part of a profitable business. There are nearly 300,000 warehouses spread across the length and breadth of the United States employing nearly 2.5 million people with the cost of warehousing being nearly 5 percent of the gross national product.
Warehouse planning must be constantly scrutinized and must be tailored to meet anticipated future requirements. The functions performed by a warehouse can be defined as follows:
● Receiving the goods from a source
● Storing and keeping track of the goods
● Picking the goods when they are required
● Shipping the goods to the appropriate customer
Requirement and Strategies for Successful Warehousing
A successful warehouse operation typically adheres to the following thinking.
● Warehousing is a critical step in the material flow.
● Warehouse operations must be aware of the customer’s requirements and consistently meet those requirements.
● Warehouse standards must be established, performance must be measured against standards, and timely actions must be taken to overcome any deviations.
● Systems must be put in place and must be conducive for proactive decisions.
● The trend is toward larger, centralized warehouses instead of smaller, decentralized warehouses.
● Warehouses need to be flexible—allowing for multiple uses.
● Activities within the warehouse must be more integrated into the overall material flow cycle.
● Cycle counting must be used to manage inventory accuracy, and accuracy above 95 percent must be the norm.
● Procedures and layouts must be designed to maximize picking efficiency and effectiveness in terms of correct ergonomic design and safety considerations.
● Vendors, customers, and a wide variety of functions within the warehouse must be integrated into a single service-providing activity.
● Advanced technologies must be more easily embraced and economically justified.
● All warehouse operations should be conducted to ensure conformance to customer requirements.
● Automatic identification systems must be the norm for data acquisition and transfer.
● Real-time, paperless control systems must be used throughout modern warehouses.
Warehouse Objectives
The resources of a warehouse are space, equipment, and personnel. The cost of space not only includes the cost of building or leasing space but also the cost of maintaining and operating the space. The equipment resources of a warehouse include computers, dock equipment, loading and material-handling equipment, and storage equipment, all of which combine to represent a sizable capital investment in the warehouse. The following objectives must be met for a warehouse to be successful:
● Maximize effective use of space.
● Maximize effective use of equipment.
● Maximize effective use of labor.
● Maximize accessibility of all items.
● Maximize protection of all items and employees.
RESOURCE PLANNING TO SATISFY DEMAND
Resource planning is the process of determining the types and amounts of resources that are required to implement an organization’s plan. The goal of resource planning in warehousing and distribution is to determine the appropriate level of service capacity—as represented by facilities/space, equipment, and labor—that is required to meet future service demand.
Capacity Planning
Capacity planning strategies at a typical warehouse involve an assessment of existing capacity, forecasts of future capacity requirements, a choice of alternative ways to build capacity, and a financial evaluation. In developing a long-range capacity plan, a firm must make a basic economic trade-off between the cost of capacity and the opportunity cost of not having adequate capacity. Capacity cost includes both the initial investment in facilities and the annual cost of operating and maintaining the facilities.
Output measures of capacity for service production are more difficult to interpret and control, since the rate at which humans work is more variable than that of machines. Therefore, input measures are more commonly used. Service organizations should forecast the human effort involved in providing necessary services.
Storage Space Planning
Space planning is the part of the science of warehousing concerned with making quantitative assessment of warehouse space requirements. Space planning consists of the following general steps:
1. Determine what materials are to be stored.
2. Determine the storage philosophy.
3. Determine space allowances for each element required to accomplish the activity.
4. Calculate the total space requirements.
The first two steps of the space planning process define the activity, techniques, equipment, information, and so on to be used in performing that activity. Once the maximum inventory levels have been determined, the inventory level that will be used as a basis for planning required storage space must be calculated. There are two major material storage philosophies:
fixed (or assigned) location storage and random (or floating) location storage. In fixed location storage, each individual stock-keeping unit will always be stored in a specific storage location. No other stock-keeping unit may be assigned to that location even though the location may be empty.
With random location storage any stock-keeping unit may be assigned to any available storage location. The amount of space planned depends on the method of assigning space. If fixed location storage is used, then sufficient space must be assigned to store the maximum amount of stock-keeping units that will ever need to be stored at any time. For a random location storage unit, the maximum amount of items on hand at any time will be the average amount of each stock-keeping unit. Usually the storage philosophy for a specific stock-keeping unit will not be strictly fixed, and during most of the time, the storage philosophy might be a hybrid of the two.
Each of the discussed storage philosophies has its own merits and limitations. Space utilization is poor in a fixed location system, while it is far better in a random storage system.
However, accessibility of material stored in a fixed storage system is better because the location of a particular product is always known. Accessibility to material in random storage systems depends on a good material locator system. The material locator system keeps track of the present location of every item in storage. In both fixed and random storage location systems, the flow of material is straightforward and economical. The third step involves determining the space requirements of each element that contributes to performing the activity. In warehousing, these elements commonly include personnel services, material handling and material storage requirements, and maintenance services and utilities. Finally, step four combines the space requirements of the individual elements to obtain total space requirements.
Storage space planning is particularly critical because the storage activity accounts for the bulk of the space requirements of a warehouse. Inadequate storage space planning can easily result in a warehouse that is significantly larger or smaller than required. Too little storage space can result in a horde of operational problems like lost stock, inaccessible material, safety problems, and low productivity. Too much storage space will result in poor use of resources and high space costs in the form of land, equipment, and capital.
Labor and Equipment Planning
For a firm that employs a large number of service providers, labor or staffing levels and equipment can be the primary capacity constraint. A warehouse and distribution operation, being very labor and equipment intensive, may face the reality that at certain times demand for their organization’s services cannot be met because the staff or equipment is already operating at peak capacity. However, it does not always make sense to hire additional service providers if low demand is a reality at other times. In this situation, the firm should attempt to hire part-time workers during high demand times.
Work Measurement Techniques for Warehousing Operations
Good management means knowing what can be expected from employees, and that requires establishing performance standards. Such standards are needed to determine
● Labor content of the service performed
● Staffing needs of the organization
● Cost and time estimates prior to performing services
● Productivity expectations
● Wage incentive plans
● Efficiency of employees
Properly set standards represent the amount of time it should take an average employee to perform the specific job activities under normal working conditions. Similar to the manufacturing sector, labor standards in the service sector are established by using traditional work measurement techniques.
There are customized work measurement techniques such as specialized predetermined time systems for specific applications. For example, AutoMOST has been used to automatically determine performance standards from a specific set of variables for the order-filling functions in warehousing operations.
The advantages of a work measurement program include
the following:
● Capital equipment investment justification
● Compensation and incentive payment
● Credible service cost
● Effective organization size and structure
● Labor requirements and unit labor cost
● Planning, control, and budgeting
● Service pricing
● Quality attainment and monitoring
● Scheduling of both labor and material movement
● Work design and human factors considerations
(To be rewritten further)
BIOGRAPHY
Richard L. Shell, Ph.D., P.E., is professor of industrial engineering in the College of Engineering and is professor of environmental health in the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati. His specialization areas include ergonomics/safety engineering, human performance, incentive motivation, and manufacturing. He received the Institute of Industrial Engineers Fellow Award in 1988, and was elected a fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers in 1995.
His most recent book, Time Based Manufacturing, was coauthored with Joe Bockerstette and copublished by Industrial Engineering and Management Press and McGraw-Hill.
Herbert W. Davis - WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT
Summary of CHAPTER 10.3 (Maynard's Handbook,5th edition)
WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT
Herbert W. Davis, Herbert W. Davis and Company, Fort Lee, New Jersey
The modern distribution center is very different from the storage warehouse of pre-1960 multilevel industrial practice. Today’s facility is large, high, and complex. A typical warehouse of the late 1990s may be 200,000 to 500,000 square feet in floor area, have stacking heights of 25 to 35 feet, have tens of millions of dollars of installed equipment, employ hundreds of people, and ship a daily throughput rate of several thousand tons of material.
These complex facilities are the direct result of the application of industrial engineering concepts and practice to the multicompany, multifacility supply chains that move finished products from source to customer. This chapter describes the functions of the warehouse and the use of industrial engineering techniques in the design and operation of the facility.
WAREHOUSING LEVELS
The storage and handling of materials is an important function in manufacturing and distribution. Storage levels normally used in the industrial process are as follows:
● Raw material stores (chemicals, bar stock, component parts)
● Tool cribs (molds, dies, cutting tools)
● Maintenance supplies (paper, oils, electrical, and plumbing repair parts)
● In-process materials (items stored between manufacturing operations)
● Plant finished-goods warehouses
● Public distribution centers
● Private distribution centers
● Bonded warehouses (usually for imported goods held while awaiting the payment of customs charges or for transfer to another country; may be for products on which local or federal taxes have not yet been paid)
In the general case, storage and warehousing occur in or near either the plant or the market. Plant-located facilities either serve the plant operations (raw materials and tool cribs, for example) or are a major customer shipping point. The plant warehouse may also be the backup point to resupply a field distribution system.
The public warehouse might contract to do price ticketing, assembly and repacking, labeling, inbound material consolidation, outbound customer freight consolidation, and order receipt and entry. Public facilities with a tie-in to transportation carriers can also offer product tracking and status reporting. These services, added to an already high level of warehouse productivity, have resulted in public warehousing growth rates higher than that of company-operated facilities.
WAREHOUSE DESIGN
The methods used to design the materials flow, handling, and storage activities and to control labor productivity in a modern distribution center are similar to industrial engineering practice in a manufacturing plant. There are a number of special conditions, however, in distribution facility design and operations that could be helpful to the industrial engineer in designing the facility.
Building Considerations
Many warehousing facilities are located inside manufacturing plants. In such cases, it is common to find that the building is constructed to meet manufacturing needs (stacking heights, floor storage arrangements, bay sizes, etc.). This practice results from the common use of space by both activities. Manufacturing frequently expands into the space occupied by warehousing.
In freestanding distribution centers and on a few plant sites, the warehousing facility is designed to fit the unique characteristics of the distribution system. For example, modern stacking equipment can economically operate at heights of 40 to 85 feet or more. Some equipment can right-angle stack in a 5-foot-wide aisle. Other equipment may be secured to the building structure or the storage racks. The need for such dense storage patterns results in the design and construction of special-purpose buildings that are not generally useful for manufacturing. In designing the modern distribution center, the industrial engineer must consider the following factors.
Material Flow. The building can have a straight-through flow with receiving on one end and shipping on the other. Another popular approach is a U-shaped flow with common receiving and shipping areas. This method concentrates most of the building employees and activities for better control. Both methods are effective; the best choice can be determined based on economic analysis and site configuration.
Levels. Older facilities—and some very modern distribution centers—are frequently multilevel. Storage, however, is most efficient when concentrated on one floor level with a high stack height. Receiving, shipping, and packing operations, on the other hand, seldom require high ceilings. Normally, horizontal travel is less costly than vertical, leading to the current interest in single-level warehouses. The industrial engineer must reconcile these factors in preparing the design.
Bay Dimensions. The storage pattern is a crucial factor in distribution center design. The buildup of storage spots and access aisles dictate the bay dimensions. Proper design can result in efficient or optimum bay dimensions. A bay is the floor area bounded by the building support columns. Forty years ago, it was not uncommon to work with 3-foot-diameter concrete columns on 20-foot centers. In this situation, storage patterns were relatively inefficient. Current construction allows about 8 to 12 inches for steel columns, spaced 30 to 60 feet on centers.
Note that the storage pattern is determined first. Then the column spacing is calculated to locate columns within the rack or storage structure. The final spacing may be any multiple that minimizes column space loss while providing a lower-cost, steel-frame roof structure. The final dimensions are decided by building cost calculations designed to balance the cost of lost space with that of extra-long steel members.
Ceiling Heights. The vertical distance between floor and lowest structural obstruction in a modern distribution center is determined by the storage stack height and the clearance needed for water dispersion from sprinkler heads. The storage area may contain storage racks on which palletloads of material are placed. There may be bulk stacks where palletloads are continuously stacked to the crushing limit. Pallet racks, however, normally are used in buildings with very high stack heights, because current lift equipment is capable of safely stacking much higher loads than product crushing limits or stability would permit.
Mezzanines. Because most modern distribution centers are constructed on a single level, the use of temporary and/or permanent mezzanines is an important building option. Mezzanines may be constructed with steel grating supported by storage racks, special columns, or building columns. They are used to more fully utilize the cubic space in a building. Typically, a warehouse may have storage covering 50 to 75 percent of the floor area. The other operations such as receiving, counting, marking, packing, and staging may total 50,000 square feet or more, but may not effectively utilize the warehouse height of 30 or more feet. Thus, two or three overhead levels might be constructed to house these activities more efficiently.
Number of Truck Doors. Doors are expensive, in both construction costs and energy loss. Determining the right number of truck and utility doors is complex, frequently requiring the use of simulation. Doors may be single-purpose (receiving, shipping, over-the-road trailer, etc.) or multipurpose to fill all needs. Most warehouses are built with the floor 48 inches above grade and pavement. This provides for forklift access to typical highway trailers. Special-purpose docks for vans (24 inches) and ground-level access for inside loading may be provided.
A method to accurately estimate the number of doors needed requires accumulating a record of truck arrivals (or unloading) and a separate record of outbound loads. The industrial engineer needs to measure the average loading or unloading time for a sample time period. Given the average arrival and departure frequency and the average load/unload service time, queuing theory can be employed to determine the appropriate number of docks. Queuing tables are available to simplify calculation.
Length-to-Width Ratios. In many cases the available land dictates the general configuration of the warehouse building. Given unlimited sites, however, the ratio of building length to width is a useful design element. The selection depends on the desired materials flow and the handling/storage method used.
U-Shaped Flow. The docks may be on one common wall to maximize control and cross-utilization of personnel. Buildings tend to be constructed square or to a 3:2 length-width ratio in these circumstances to minimize internal movement. Expansion is usually on the back wall opposite the truck dock wall. This provides for low-cost additions since the expansion need only provide lighting and minimal support services. Everything else is in the original building section. It is also easy to expand on the other two walls if appropriate.
U-shaped flow has become the most popular building shape over the past 20 years. The reason is that it permits storing the most active products close to both the receiving and shipping docks. Thus, the industrial engineer can minimize travel distance on the items with the largest pallet movements. Also, it tends to group most employees in a small area, simplifying supervision. Overall staffing for the facility is thus minimized.
Increased use of computerized warehouse management systems has improved location and labor control, making U-shaped product paths easy to maintain.
Rectangular. Straight-through materials flow buildings have docks at opposite ends with storage rack aisles parallel to the flow so that an item can move in a straight line from receipt to storage, picking, and shipping. The building width is a function of the number of truck doors needed, which will be on about 12-foot centers. Thus, if 10 doors are needed for shipping, the building may be 120 to 150 feet wide. The long dimension is calculated to provide sufficient area for staging, storage, and operations. Typical ratios are from 1:2 up to 1:5. Expansion of straight-through-flow buildings is on the long side to provide for additions to all the operations roughly in proportion to the original space allocations. Straight-flow buildings have an inherent operating disadvantage: all material must traverse the entire long dimension.
Hybrid. Some warehouses have a large number of quite different activities dictated by product or corporate circumstances. Examples are cool and frozen material storage rooms, unit repacking or packaging functions, hazardous materials items, and so forth. These special circumstances result in buildings that do not meet the general types described. A common hybrid today occurs when the building storage area is designed for very high storage. Stacker cranes can store products 85 or more feet in height and typically require only very narrow aisles 5 feet or less in width. In these cases, unique building specifications may be used to control access and environmental conditions in the storage module.
Warehouse Equipment
Most warehouses use conventional-style equipment for the storage and movement activities.
Some conventional items are as follows.
Pallet Racks. These are used to store pallet-loads of product at multiple levels, making better use of floor space. Conceptually, racks are storage structures constructed of formed steel with uprights fitted with movable bars set at appropriate heights to accommodate pallet-loads. Racks are usually strung in long lines with access aisles between them. A typical arrangement has a module consisting of a row of racks holding 4-foot-deep pallets, an 8- to 12-foot access aisle, and another row of racks. Other types of pallet racks are for double-deep drive-through or storage to store pallets deeper. Finally, racks may be fitted with steel or plywood shelves to accommodate individual cases and small parts.
Storage Bins. Usually of steel, bins are short sections of shelving designed to hold small lots of material. Many configurations are used, including drawers, slotted dividers, differing shelf heights, and reinforcing bars for heavy materials.
Flow Racks. Picking of individual items and small cases from bins or pallet racks may become laborious. For some high-volume operations, flow racks are used. A flow rack is usually a rack 8 to 10 feet wide and as deep or deeper. Slide- or roller-equipped angle frames permit loading a case at the rear of the rack so that it will flow down the lane to the picking face. A few to a dozen cases may be contained in a flow lane. Each rack may be six or eight lanes wide and three to five high—a total capacity of perhaps 20 to 30 different items, each supported by a continuous feed of 10 cases or more. This gives a dense, usable storage pattern to support high-volume order-picking activities. In this arrangement, the picking face presents many more items to the picker per foot of access aisle compared to conventional bin or pallet rack storage. The industrial engineer, however, should observe that flow racks typically require that every case be handled twice: in and out. Thus, the highest-volume items are most often stored in pallet-loads, not in case flow racks. The best use of case flow racks is for medium-usage items. A related common technique is to use pallet flow racks for items that are very high volume.
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