Indexes based on the number of customers to locate items in warehouse

Abstract

An important factor to obtain efficiency of storage operations is to establish an optimal policy for storage location assignment. To this end, one of the indexes more circulated and used is the Cuber-per-Order (COI). However, it is observed that there are situations where the use of COI can concentrate advantages to a minority of clients. In this sense, this paper proposes to verify the effects on the performance of a warehouse when using alternative indexes (COIC and CIC), based on the number of clients that require each type of product (item), compared to the COI. It was possible to conclude that when the number of clients is considered to determine optimal policy for storage location assignment, the warehouse can acquire a competitive advantage, since the largest number of clients can be benefited. This represents an opportunity to raise the service level offered by the warehouse to its clients.

Storage; Customer service; Class formation and location