Project Progress

Our project for the Aflac distribution center is coming together.  We've compared all of the data given to us and found discrepancies among the files, but we've made some assumptions to make up for the errors. 

We've analyzed the current situation and found that they are assigning their items to locations based on equal amounts of space for each item.  While this is probably the easiest method for the warehouse personnel, it is not the best way when it comes to minimizing the cost of restocking.  The optimal methodology for assigning items to locations is to use available volume in the warehouse space, and have each item "bid" on the space.  Items are assigned locations based on a formula that uses the number of picks per year and the size of the item (12"x9.5"x11.6" box) to determine the cubic inches moved in a year.  It can be proven mathematically that this formula is the most cost effective method for "slotting" items in a warehouse, but few companies use it.  They do things like they've always done them!

We've found the optimal slotting for each item that has been requested in the five months of data we were given and produced a "Birds Eye View" of the activity in the warehouse as we found it and in our proposed item assignment model.  For this part of the project we need to create some graphs that pictorially represent the cost savings to Aflac.

The two students who are taking the course from off campus are working on the latest possible cut-off time for priority orders.  Since Aflac is a national company the current cutoff time of 10 AM Eastern Time is not very fair to California agents, since that translates to 7 AM Pacific Time.  They are confident that they'll have a solution by tomorrow.

The final area we need to explore is a problem for our team.  The current item slotting causes congestion among the pickers and we need to be able to show that our design does not cause congestion.  We've unsuccessfully worked on a program to simulate the picking process and have abandoned that strategy.  I think we're going to have to mathematically prove it.  We have a paper that our professor wrote about this issue that I think can be applied to our situation.  I hope so since we have our second test a week from Tuesday and our preliminary presentation is due a week from Thursday.