Warehouse Sizing and Configuration- Art OR Science
The typical warehouse building has receiving doors on one side of the building, and shipping doors on the other side. This is a traditional configuration. While this flow-thru design is often the best configuration, but it may not be the only one. A warehouse could be configured by, placing receiving and shipping doors on the same side of the building. This may allow both functions to share sortation equipment, using one set of diverts to sort received cartons for palletizing and put-away, and another to build outbound customer orders. It also comes with another advantage. One can provide a common and secure space for both delivery and pickup drivers to congregate. While there is usually flexibility to add doors even to a specification building, the final arrangement of doors needs to be closely tied to the material handling system layout.
Other factors that may be worth considering are the size of the building, building height etc. Most of the warehouses and distribution centers today make use of the hand held mobile devices to perform effective inventory tracking. With increasing sizes of the warehouses, effective heat map of the floor is a very important consideration. Too much or Too little may lead to a number of problems when it comes to the performance of these mobile computers. A lot of deliberations need to go into the installation of the wireless access points. The number of WAPs and their relative placements is vital to the success in the usage of these devices. It has been commonly observed that cluttering of WAPs causes signal interference. This causes the devices to vary off. Extending this argument further, those areas of the warehouse that is heavily stacked with inventory, need special attention. Good signal strength is needed in these areas for the mobile devices to work on expected lines.
In times to come the best warehouse would no longer compete with each other, but with value chains. A successful warehouse ecosystem carries with it the attributes of optimal physical sizing.
Other factors that may be worth considering are the size of the building, building height etc. Most of the warehouses and distribution centers today make use of the hand held mobile devices to perform effective inventory tracking. With increasing sizes of the warehouses, effective heat map of the floor is a very important consideration. Too much or Too little may lead to a number of problems when it comes to the performance of these mobile computers. A lot of deliberations need to go into the installation of the wireless access points. The number of WAPs and their relative placements is vital to the success in the usage of these devices. It has been commonly observed that cluttering of WAPs causes signal interference. This causes the devices to vary off. Extending this argument further, those areas of the warehouse that is heavily stacked with inventory, need special attention. Good signal strength is needed in these areas for the mobile devices to work on expected lines.
In times to come the best warehouse would no longer compete with each other, but with value chains. A successful warehouse ecosystem carries with it the attributes of optimal physical sizing.
