Abstract
This master thesis has been written during the autu
mn of 2007 and in the month of
January 2008. It investigates how the Lean philosop
hy can be used in Warehousing
businesses. Further it gives example of tools that
can help Warehousing companies to
become Leaner in their business.
There is a contradiction between Lean Thinking and
Warehousing practice today,
since Lean strive at being just in time with a pull
flow with no batching production
and with preferably no inventory kept between the d
ifferent processes. This is an
ideal scenario. In real life there exist variation
in demand, uncertainty in lead time and
long lead times that cannot be fully predicted. Thi
s makes a warehouse necessary to
provide items to the production, assembling or cust
omer in time.
The warehouses doesn’t add any extra value to the i
tems themselves but only to
customers by giving it in the time that the custome
r wants it, in the right amount and
in the right quality. This makes the processes in t
he warehouse that is necessary for
maintaining that ability; necessary non-value added
processes. The other processes
that aren’t necessary are just non-value added proc
esses. The warehouse can also be
preferred for distribution purposes. But since noth
ing the warehouse do with the item
gives it more value in monetary terminology, little
handling of the item as possible is
to be preferred. But as mentioned before there are
necessary non value added
processes and there are those who are just non valu
e added. The goal is to avoid the
non value added activities and improve the necessar
y non-value added processes if
they can’t be avoided as well.
One way to improve the necessary value added proces
s picking is to place the items
in a matter that reduce the work for the picker whe
n picking. It could be placing them
in appropriate heights and on picking frequency to
reduce travel time. This could be
done by an ABC-classification on the picking freque
ncy and dividing the picking area
into zones depending on the ABC.
Another way to improve the picking process is to vi
sualize and assign the workload
as optimal as possible. This could be done with the
Heijunka concept together with
the shipping order logic.
Keywords
Lean Warehousing, Warehousing, ABC-analysis, Heijun
ka, Lean Thinking