The optimal design of warehousing facilities

This thesis is concerned with optimal design of warehousing facilities. Specifically, it is concerned with the optimization of the internal design decisions relative to the equipment and methods to be used for the receipt, storage and shipment of merchandise. Techniques do not exist for the complete analysis of warehousing facilities at the present time. The types of costs resulting from various groups of internal design decisions, together with their time-phased patterns, and the degree to which these costs interact, have been investigated. As a result, a minimum requirement for the optimal design of warehousing facilities has been determined to be the joint consideration of: Storage Mode decisions. Materials Handling Equipment decisions, the Order Picking/Consolidation System decision, and the Facility Layout decision. The existing qualitative and quantitative techniques for the analysis of these four groups of decisions, both individually and jointly, have been reviewed. Many analytical techniques have been developed for the arrangement of facilities, some of which are applicable to warehouses. Some techniques exist for the selection of storage modes and materials handling equipment. No techniques exist, at the present time, for the analysis of the order picking/ consolidation system decision. Techniques do exist for the joint analysis of storage modes and materials handling equipment and for the joint analysis of materials handling equipment and facility layout. No techniques exist, however, for the joint analysis of storage modes and facility layout. Additionally, no techniques exist, at the present time, for the joint analysis of any three of the above four types of decisions. The format for a computer program to develop costefficient, though not strictly optimal, designs for warehousing facilities has been developed - the Warehouse Design Optimization Program (WADOP). This program requires fundamental input data from the user relative to the merchandise to be handled and stored and jointly considers the storage mode decisions, the materials handling equipment decisions, the order picking/consolidation system decision and the facility layout decision. A design program and a costing program are envisioned, operating in a feedback arrangement, so as to minimize the overall costs of constructing and operating warehousing facilities. [...]