Warehouse Layout Design and Product Placement Analysis of Fast–Moving Consumer Goods by Considering the Intra– and Inter–Relationsbetween Common Items and Group Products Demand

Abstract

Layouts and storage location assignments play an important role in reducing unproductive travel distances. Typically, fast-moving consumer goods warehouses determine product placement based on picking frequencies. However, this approach may be insufficient when dealing with situations where requested items are correlated, such as the intra- and inter-relations between common items and product groups. Considering these correlations can improve picking operation efficiency. The objective of this study is to determine optimal storage locations by recognizing associations within and between product groups. The case study data includes two distinct groups: 336 SKUs of consumer brands and 81 SKUs of common items. The proposed method involves two phases. First, the degree of association for each product is determined based on intra- and inter-relations among groups using association-rule concepts. Second, the optimal locations are designed and analyzed to accommodate both correlated groups and individual items. Performance evaluations on 10 picking lists indicate that layouts designed with inter- and intra-group product relations outperform other approaches. Compared to the original travel distance, the proposed storage locations reduce unproductive travel from 11,897.6 meters to 3,996.4 meters, achieving a reduction of up to 66.41%.