Stowage Decisions in Multi-Zone Storage Systems

22 Pages Posted: 22 Jun 2017 Last revised: 29 Sep 2017

See all articles by Rong Yuan

Rong Yuan

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Operations Research Center

Tolga Cezik

Amazon.com, Inc.

Stephen C. Graves

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management

Date Written: September 21, 2017

Abstract

The stowage decision determines how arriving products are distributed in a storage system or warehouse. In particular we consider the zone-stowage decision for large warehouses that are organized into distinct storage zones. An example would be a multi-floor warehouse where each floor is a storage zone. Each storage zone has limited picking capacity; we want to stow the product inventory across the storage zones so as to be able to meet uncertain demand requirements with the limited picking capacity in each zone. Determining how to spread the inventory across the storage zones is the zone-stowage decision that we consider in this paper. With a simulation study, we identify two zone-stowage policies that are effective at balancing the picking workload across different storage zones. The first zone-stowage policy achieves a chaining-inspired allocation by splitting the received quantity for each product across two storage zones; the second zone-stowage policy explicitly tracks the expected workload for each storage zone, termed the velocity of the zone, and then stows arriving products to the storage zone with the smallest velocity.

Keywords: Stowage decision, storage system, manufacturing flexibility, warehouse management

JEL Classification: C44, C65

Suggested Citation

Yuan, Rong and Cezik, Tolga and Graves, Stephen C., Stowage Decisions in Multi-Zone Storage Systems (September 21, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2990432 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2990432

Rong Yuan

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Operations Research Center ( email )

77 Massachusetts Avenue
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United States

Tolga Cezik

Amazon.com, Inc. ( email )

Seattle, WA 98144
United States

Stephen C. Graves (Contact Author)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management ( email )

E62-579
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA MA 02139
United States
617-253-6602 (Phone)
617-253-1462 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://web.mit.edu/sgraves/www/

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