Abstract
The operation efficiency of a distribution center usually significantly affects business operation performance. Furthermore, since the storage area in a warehouse is critical to a distribution center, effective storage management will significantly enhance the operation performance of a distribution center. In order to assist the domain experts to more efficiently and accurately acquire suggestions for storage re-allocation, this research proposes a heuristic algorithm for storage re-allocation operation. First, data about storage locations and inventory are acquired from the warehouse management system (WMS). Based on the inventory and storage information, the items in all storage locations can be merged via a two-phase storage re-allocation method in order to increase the number of the empty storage locations. Based on the above procedure, suggestions for storage re-allocation operation could be generated. Moreover, a storage management system is also developed in this research to automatically generate visualized suggestions for storage re-allocation and management operations. As a whole, this research presents a systematic algorithm and technique for warehouse managers to efficiently and accurately acquire suggestions for storage management. © 2009 IFAC.