The issues of selection warehouse process strategies

Abstract

Paper presents problems of designing and organization logistic processes in warehouse facilities. Highlighted the need of improving logistics facilities actions as a key aspect of increasing productivity, flexibility and reliability of supply chains. For this purpose, warehouse process and the most common sub-processes and activities included in it were characterized. Additionally, it was noted that, warehouse processes may be implemented in many different ways and under various strategies. Selection of particular warehouse strategy usually depends on basic warehouse tasks, structure and size of customer orders, handled logistic units, costs of materials handling in particular sub-processes (both financial and time costs), availability of storage space and labour resources, etc. Therefore, probability of selecting the particular strategy is dependent on technical and organizational factors. Because of that, the paper presents some approach to selecting warehousing strategy. This approach takes into account mentioned technical and organizational factors. It also uses decision-making tree which shows probabilities of selection subsequent warehouse operations (in particular moment and warehouse situation) as well as probability of such situations as e.g. shipment suspending or cancelation in case of choosing a given strategy. Examples of such decision-making tree with probabilities of warehouse strategy selection is shown in paper.