Optimizing The Dock Selection Process And Measuring Manpower Productivity For Single Order Picking Process In A Warehouse: A Case Study Of A FMCG Company In India

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Omkar Kad, Paluri Achuta Ratna

Abstract

Warehouse operating costs are a major component of the supply chain costs. Manpower cost and in particular the picking cost contributes substantially to the warehouse operating cost. Optimizing the picking process and tracking workforce productivity at the granular level is the key to reducing costs. Organizations follow different picking processes based on criteria such as frequency of the customer order, strategy used for fulfilling customer orders and so on. This study focuses on the low-level single order picking process. Time taken for picking a particular customer order is dependent on dock selected for staging area. A case study of a FMCG company was used for the purpose of analyzing the productivity for single order picking process in a warehouse. A VBA based MS-excel tool was created to predict the optimized dock and measure the productivity of workforce. This lead to an increased picking process efficiency. Input to VBA based MS-Excel tool were warehouse order which had information related to the picklist and pallet fit ratio. The output of tool were the 3 top docks for staging along with time required for picking at the recommended dock. Algorithm used for this tool was dynamic and it could predict standard time required for picking a particular customer order thus helping in measuring the performance efficiency and productivity.

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