A decision-support system for the design and management of warehousing systems

The issue of material handling involves the design and operative control of warehousing systems (i.e., distribution centres), which allow matching vendors and demands, smoothing with seasonality, consolidating products and arranging distribution activities. Warehousing systems play a crucial role in providing efficiency and customer satisfaction. The warehouse design entails a wide set of decisions, which involve layout constraints and operative issues that seriously affect the performances and the overall logistics costs. This study presents an original decision-support system (DSS) for the design, management, and control of warehousing systems. Specifically, the proposed DSS implements a top-down methodology that considers both strategic warehouse design and operative operations management. The DSS can simulate the logistics and material handling performances of a warehousing system. Heuristic methods and algorithms address several critical warehouse issues, such as the order picking process, which is responsible for 55% of the overall costs in a distribution centre. The benefits due to the adoption of the proposed decision-support system are summarised as a dashboard of key performance indicators (KPIs) of space and time efficiency that allow logistics providers, practitioners, and managers as well as academicians and educators to face real-world warehousing instances and to find useful guidelines for material handling. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.