Systematic Warehouse Planning-SWP: A Complete Procedure for the Assessment of an Order-Picking System

This chapter describes a systematic procedure for (re) designing a new (existing) material-handling (MH) and warehousing system. This procedure summarizes and formalizes our experience collected from many applications in industry, from automotive to food supply chains, third-party logistics (3PL), the packaging machining industry, and spare parts supply chains. Industry managers and practitioners can implement this procedure stepwise. This can be further improved through new research conducted by academics and researchers working on models and methods to support decision-making processes. Application of this method to actual case studies demonstrated its effectiveness, allowing the reader to apply the proposed steps using robust data from the field and historical data repositories.