IMPROVING WAREHOUSE OPERATIONS FOR TUBE, PIPE/Better efficiency leads to lower costs

摘要

MANY large warehouses for pipe and long metal products are more than 300,000 square feet, with 2,000 to 3,000 product numbers, or stock-keeping units (SKUs), and more than five miles of shelving and thousands of bin locations. This represents a daunting task for personnel involved with putting materials into storage locations and for those engaged in picking material for shipments. The method for analyzing warehouse operations for efficiency improvements, however, applies to large and small warehouses alike. A recent study shows that, even if they are equipped with rather sophisticated data storage systems, many warehouses have layouts that are inefficient. A quick method to determine the potential for improving productivity is to develop a scatter chart of the bin locations for the top 100 SKUs in the warehouse.