An Improvement of Transportation in Warehouse with Simulation A Case Study of Soft Drinks Industry

Abstract

This research is dealing with a transportation process within a warehouse and the purpose is toeliminate wasting activities. The 120 data sets have been collected to identify the root causes of the wastesin the warehouse. Lean concept has been utilized to reduce those wastes. From the process activity mappingdiagram, it shows that there is waiting time in the delivery process and the high inventory was occurreddue to the slow delivery process. Then, we apply the lean concept and simulation modeling to reflect thecurrent situation and the future outcomes that might occur regarding to our 2 alternatives to reduce thewastes. Firstly, applying Kanban is investigated. The second alternative is to combine the direct loadtechnique with Kanban. It was founded that Kanban helps to control the number of WIP and leads to nowaiting time of forklifts. However, the finished goods will have to wait for the forklifts instead. As we donot have to wait for the finished products, we can use this time for handling empty bottles back to the re-useprocess. The results from the both alternatives are not different significantly, but they can reduce inventoryby 10.24%, 2.37% and reduce waiting to zero. We can then conclude that the implementation of Kanban canimprove working efficiency and this study can be a guide to implement Kanban in continuous processes.

Keywords : Simulation / Kanban System / Transportation / Direct Load