Warehouse Scheduling
Our Warehouse Scheduling tool is a powerful form of simulation that can accurately emulate processes in a warehouse. It can model an entire automated operation before it has even been constructed, and is an essential way of demonstrating how an operation looks, what its likely throughputs and capacity will be, and where any bottlenecks might arise.
When a simulation is made of a warehouse that is thought to be running at capacity, it’s commonly expected that the model will suggest improvements that will solve throughput problems. Yet rather than suggesting new building works, types of physical storage or improved physical handling, a simulation will often confirm that there is actually plenty more capacity available.
This is because capacity is typically driven by the demands of the wider network, especially in the case of a large warehouse working in relation to other upstream and downstream warehouses. Significant changes in customer delivery boundaries, levels of customer demand and warehouse opening times can all have a big impact on capacity at specific times. While week-to-week patterns do emerge, with predictable profiles for certain days of the week or seasonal patterns across the year, major changes across the network can upset these patterns and complicate your plans. That ‘s why our focus on network-driven scheduling is so important.
What is Network-Driven Warehouse Scheduling?
We take a methodical approach to warehouse scheduling that identifies potential impacts across the network. This allows us to understand and comprehensively manage effective warehouse schedules. Our approach is as follows:
- Divide up the warehouse workload by its outbound destinations, including:
- Local customer deliveries
- Full-load deliveries to other warehouses or to bulk customers
- Trunker deliveries for transhipment (trailer swap or pallet swap) via another warehouse
- Understand the full outbound trunking and delivery schedule
- Forecast facility workload by destination / departure schedules
- Define processes required to handle each category of workload e.g.
- Receive outbound orders
- Plan pick and pack
- Execute pick, pack, marshall and load (for each workload type)
- Pick
- Pack
- Marshall
- Load
- Define warehouse shift patterns and allocate available staff to them
- Develop the full workload versus shift patter schedule for the warehouse.
This approach is powered by our Warehouse Workload Scheduler, which works with LogiMap’s Visibility and Planning modules to provide total network planning. By generating very close matches between expected workload across the week and the required shift patterns and staff deployment, LogiMap maximises warehouse capacity while delivering improved performance and efficiency across the network.