A DMAIC approach for warehouse storage and order picking process improvement

Warehouses play an important role as a linkage of the supply chains. Once the shipment arrives at the warehouse, it becomes the warehouse responsibility to manage the movements and transfers of the goods. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and improve the storage and picking process system. This study implemented a well-known process improvement technique, define-measure-analyse-improve-control (DMAIC), in an international courier company's warehouse, consisting of approximately 60 K sq. ft. with a storage capacity of 60 million pieces. The results show a reduction of approx. 9.9% in cost per order, increased items per picker/hour from 42 to 59 items, time per order fulfilment from 8-10 minutes to 2-4 minutes, and improved worker efficiency from 33% to 83%. After implementing our proposed methodology, managers and decision makers saw an improvement in their warehousing operations in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.