1. 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.

2. Profiling Database Source Data
INV. MASTER
ORDER
MASTER
ITEM MASTER
Inventory Snapshots
Average Inventory Levels
Order Header
Order Detail
SKU Number
Description
Item Cube
Pieces Per Case
Cases Per Pallet
Division
Product Group
Item Weight
Item Ordered Qty Unit of Measure

3. Developing Profiling Reports & Graphs
Inventory Master Data
Order Data
STEP #1: CONSOLIDATE
&
CALCULATE
Item Master Data
STEP #2: ANALYZE (Sort / Rank)
&
PRESENT

4. How Do You Design a Warehouse?
Two Ways To Design a Warehouse
Storage Driven Approach via Cube Analysis
Picking Driven Approach via Order Analysis
Storage Driven
Picking Driven

5. What is the Storage Driven Approach to Design?
PART I:
PART II:
PART III:
Define Your Storage Zones
Design Your Forward
Pick Areas
Define How You Will Plan &
Pick Orders

6. Designing a Warehouse
Part I
Define Your Storage Zones

7. 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
Multi-Pallet Drive In Rack
Drawers
.125
1.5
40.0
320.0
Cubic Feet of Storage Required For An Item

8. Develop an Inventory Container Graph
Drawers
Now you can begin to think about what storage modes might be reasonable candidates for the merchandise you are storing…

9. Develop a Pick Size Classification Scheme
Next develop a classification scheme for picks based on the size of the pick. Usually designers will use pallet”, “case”, and “piece” pick sizes
Piece Pick
Case Pick
Pallet Pick

10. Assess the Activity In Each Inventory Container
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.
Piece Pick Activity Curve
Move these to Case Storage

11. Designing a Warehouse Part II Define Your Forward Pick Areas
Reserve Areas
Part II
Define Your Forward Pick Areas
Forward Pick Areas

12. 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

13. 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.
80% of Picks from 20% of Items
These Items should go into a forward pick area.

14. 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.
% Case
Trade Off:
Space Utilization and Efficiency
Number of
% Days
Picks
SKUs
Picked
Filled 20 33 99 20 40 60 80
100% 20 40 60 80
100% 30 46 97 40 52 95 50 67 93 60 73 92 70 79 90 80 81 83 90 84 79
100 88 68
110 92 63
120 92 52 20 40 60 80
100
120
140
160
130 95 44
140 98 33
Number of SKUs
150 98 25
160
100 22
% Days Picked
% Case Picks Filled

15. Determining How Many Items in Forward Pick90

16. Designing a Warehouse
Part III
Define How To Plan & Pick Orders

17. 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.

18. Ways in which you can process orders differently
Order Selection Criteria & Groups
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)
Forced Upon You By The Business
Efficiency Opportunity

19. Assess the Significance of Single Unit Orders
Units/Order as a Percentage of Total Orders
45% of all Orders are single unit orders.
One of the greatest opportunities to improve warehouse efficiency is choosing a different mechanism for picking single unit orders from multi-unit orders.

20. Assess the significance of grouping by area
Reserve (Pallet) Area
Orders Completed By Area
Case Forward Pick Area
Piece Forward Pick Area
Orders that require merchandise coming from different storage areas within the warehouse may need to be picked differently.

21. Deciding on a Picking Approach
Order #1
Order #2
Sorting Picks at End of Tour
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.

22. How Will Orders in Forward Pick Be Picked?
Multi-Order Picking Cart
Order #2
Order #3
Order #1
Good candidates for Multi Order Picking
This approach was fraught with problems. First of all, Batch Picking has inherent to it a certain lead time. You can’t ship an order until all the orders associated with the batch are picked and distributed.
Second, the manual distribution of the batch picks to orders was an accident waiting to happen. Stacks of boots could fall over easily, operators could miss dropping off a box, things could get lost. The end result was many orders were waiting around at the end of a wave for something or another.
Finally, ACME recognized that their cost/boot had increased substantially over their previous costs.

23. 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

24. 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

25. Summary of Warehouse Design Process
PART I:
PART II:
PART III:
Define Your Storage Zones
Design Your Forward
Pick Areas
Define How You Will Plan &
Pick Orders

26. 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”
It’s 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?

27. Schema
Process
Reference Model
Domain
Model
Instance

28. 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.

29. 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?