A model for storage arrangement and re-allocation for storage management operations

Owing to the development of information technology and third party logistics (3PL), logistics outsourcing has become a critical issue of enterprise logistics management. The operation efficiency of a distribution centre usually significantly affects business operation performance. Furthermore, since the storage area in a warehouse is critical to a distribution centre, effective storage management will significantly enhance the operation performance of a distribution centre. Traditionally, the storage management operations (e. g. storage arrangement and re-allocation) rely heavily on the expertise of experienced engineers. Under such circumstances, the decision process for storage management is usually time consuming and ineffective. In order to assist the domain experts to more efficiently and accurately acquire suggestions for storage re-allocation, this research proposes a heuristic algorithm for storage reallocation operation. First, data about storage locations and inventory are acquired from the warehouse management system (WMS). Based on the inventory and storage information, the items in all storage locations can be merged via a two-phase storage re-allocation method in order to increase the number of the empty storage locations. Based on the above procedure, suggestions for a storage re-allocation operation could be generated. Moreover, a storage management system is also developed in this research in an effort to automatically generate visualised suggestions for storage re-allocation and management operations. As a whole, this research presents a systematic algorithm and technique for warehouse managers to efficiently and accurately acquire suggestions for storage management.