Collaborative Research: Designing Distribution Centers for a Service Economy

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This research will investigate the design and operation of warehouses and distribution centers in the context of a service economy. Existing research(and practice) in this area is based on a number of design assumptions that are appropriate when attempting to minimize costs, but when one shifts the focus to maximizing service, these assumptions are no longer appropriate. This research focuses on two fundamental areas of inquiry. The first involves the design of aisles within an order picking area to reduce order response time. Proposed designs incorporate diagonal aisles, picking aisles with different orientations, and aisles with different widths. Each of these innovations can be shown to improve the responsiveness of an order picking system. The second area involves the performance of manual order picking in heavily congested systems, which are common with organizations that serve retail and direct-to-consumer markets.Integrating these two areas will lead to distribution center designs that are visibly different than those that exist today.As the U. S. economy shifts away from its manufacturing base, toward services and the distribution of products manufactured overseas, distribution centers will become a sort of "factory of the 21st century." By some estimates, there are already more than 500,000 distribution centers in North America alone, and more are added every month. Discoveries and innovations produced by this research will help practitioners design more productive and responsive facilities, which are designed from the start to satisfy the demanding customers of the service economy.