Increasing e-commerce distribution center capacity through slotting strategy

To meet increasing consumer expectations around delivery times, ecommerce retailers must take orders from 'click' to 'ship' as soon as possible. For retailers with tens of thousands of stock keeping units (SKUs), item picking is often the slowest step in the distribution center (DC) fulfillment process due to time taken for pickers to move between item locations. Pick paths are dictated by item slotting, the process of assigning SKUs to locations within the pick area, and therefore slotting improvements increase pick rate. This decreases the time taken to pick orders allowing more orders to be fulfilled in a given time period and increasing fulfillment capacity. This thesis presents a method for increasing pick efficiency through improved slotting strategy. This is achieved through placement of high velocity SKUs close to the outbound path resulting in a reduction in picker distance travelled, and on mid-level shelves where they are more ergonomical to pick. The impact of slotting strategies was compared through a simulation model. Simulations with historical data indicated a potential 5.2-10.8% increase in fulfilled units over a given time period.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Murphy, Lorcan Andrew.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen Graves and David Simchi-Levi.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• Leaders for Global Operations Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/126911

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/126911