Storage assignment is an important decision problem in warehouse operation management. In conventional
problem settings of distribution warehouses, stock items are stored in bulk but retrieved in small
quantities. Storage assignment methods typically make use of demand attribute information of order
quantity, order frequency and correlation between demands. In this paper, we address a different problem
in which the request for the same stock items is stochastically recurrent. The problem arises when
the items are needed in production and, after production, are returned to warehouses for later reuse.
Examples of such items include tooling in factory, books in library and digital objects in data warehouses.
Utilizing the recurrent characteristics, a salient recency-based storage assignment policy and an associated
cascaded warehouse configuration are proposed and analyzed in this paper. This paper has four
parts. In the first part, a model of recurrent demand is described. In the second part, the efficiency of
the recency-based policy and a traditional ID-based policy is analyzed. In the third part, a mathematical
programming model for optimal configuration of cascaded warehouses is presented. Finally, a case study
of hospital visits is presented. This paper concludes with recommendations on cascading and zoning the
warehouse for applying the recency-based policy.