Warehouse Operations

Assignment #2
On
Case: Wholesale Distributor of Office Products

Submitted by:
Navin Kumar Rajak
Roll no. 159278111
SJMSOM, IIT Bombay

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Q1) Describe the skus. For example: Where are they? Which are most popular? On
what percentage of orders do they appear? How many skus are never requested? How
does the population of skus change over time?

Solution: The following are the answers to the question asked:

a) There are a total of 18,866 unique SKUs being stored in the warehouse.
b) The maximum number of SKUs are being stored in Zones A (6,577 unique SKUs) and Zone B
(4,872 unique SKUs) which implies that the maximum concentration in the warehouse is for
small stuff being shelved upstairs on mezzanine.
c) The most popular SKUs in terms of the total quantity ordered and the percentages of orders
in which they appear are listed below:

d) Around 2,826 SKUs out of 18,866 (~15%) are never ordered out of which 732 SKUs are
Largest items stored in zone G which means a lot of warehouse space wastage (There are a
total of 2,463 SKUs in zone G) . Also, there are 569 SKUs in the Order file which are
completely missing in the SKU file.

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Q2) Describe the work. How much is there and where is it? For example, how is it
distributed among skus, among zones, among aisles, among bays, among orders, among
vendors, among days, etc.?

Solution: There are a total of 56,743 orders, out of which 53,360 orders are shipped.

Among SKUs:

A few SKUs have very high frequency of ordering and shipping. Some of the mostly used SKUs are
shown above

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Among Zones:

Zones A and B are the busiest in terms of amount of work being handled. They consist of the small
items mainly.

Among Bays:

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The distribution of work among bays are more or less even barring a few variations. Bay 33 and 1are
the busiest while 37th and 36th bays are least busy

Among Orders:

Some of the orders have a huge amount of SKUs (Shipped and ordered) while most of the orders have
lesser number of items involved. The skewness is evident from the graph shown above.

Among Vendors:

AVE, FEL and QUA cater to the largest proportion of orders that are placed. Maximum number of
vendors cater to smaller portions of the overall orders.

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Among Aisles:

120000

100000

80000

60000 Sum of Order_qty

Sum of Ship_qty
40000

20000

0
4 1 15 2 9 14 16 36 7 38 35 28 13 25 37 32 21 42 43 26 23 40

The work among aisles is distributed more or less evenly with aisles 4,1,15 and 2 being the busiest
and aisles 40, 23 and 26 being least busy.

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Q3. Describe the orders. For example: What percentage of orders are for a single line? What
percentage are for more than 20 lines? What is the distribution of lines per order? What is the
distribution of lines per order within each zone? What percentage of the labor do single-line orders
represent? Orders with more than 20 lines? What percentage of orders touch the mezzanine (zones
A, B)? Bin-shelving on the floor (zones C, D)? The security zone (E)? Pallet rack (G)? What percentage
of orders are completed entirely on the mezzanine (that is, within zones A and B)? Entirely within
floor shelving (that is, within zones C and D)? Entirely within the high security area, for valuable
items (zone E)? Entirely within pallet rack (zone G)? How many orders are completed with each of
the possible pairs of zones?

Solution: The Calculations are done below:

Total No of order: 56743

No of order is for single line: 34276

%age of orders is for single line: 60.41%

No of order is for more than 20 line: 1405

%age of orders is for more than 20 line: 2.48%

D I ST R IB U T I O N O F O R D E R A S P E R ZO N E
70000
59877
60000 56959

50000

40000
Total
30000
21548
20000 16094 14169 15047

10000 4910

0
A B C D E G #N/A

Total Number of Orders = 188604

Correct No of orders (order Qty = shipping Qty) with each possible pair of zones = 175800

Discrepancy in orders (quantity shipped < quantity ordered) = 12804

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 % A G E D I ST R IB U T I O N O F O R D E R A S P E R
ZO N E
40%
35% 32%
30%
30%
25%
20%
15% 11%
9% 8% 8%
10%
5% 3%

0%
A B C D E G #N/A
-5%

Below graph for labor for single linde and more than 20 line as percentage of order:

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Q4. Where are the shipping discrepancies (quantity shipped < quantity ordered)? In what
skus, zones, days, etc?

Solution:
Total Number of Orders = 188604

Correct No of orders (order Qty = shipping

No Discrepancy Discrepancy
Qty) = 175800
12804

Discrepancy in orders (quantity shipped <

quantity ordered) = 12804

%age Discrepancy in orders (quantity shipped

< quantity ordered) = 6.79% 175800

Total SKU in Line excel file = 16609

Discrepancy in number of SKU in Line excel File = 2211

%age Discrepancy in number of SKU in Line excel File = 13.31 %

Discrepancy in Zone:

D I S C R EPA NC Y I N O R D E RS _ ZO NE W I S E
4500 4212
4000
3500
2947
3000 2724
2500
2000 Total

1500
1088
1000 694 715
424
500
0
A B C D E G #N/A

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 Discrepancy in Orders Bay Wise:

D I S C R E PA N C Y I N O R D E RS _BAY W I S E
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 LL WA

Discrepancy in Orders Date Wise:

D I S C R E PA N C Y I N O R D E RS _ DAT E W I S E
1200
1010
969
1000
860
804 789 794
800 687 685
644 656 610 625
556 582
600 521 522 500 489 501
Total
400

200

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