INVENTORY OPTIMIZATION USING MULTI-CRITERIA ANALYSIS – A CASE STUDY AT DOKA GmbH’s CENTRAL WAREHOUSEINTRODUCTIONThis project gives an introduction and background of DOKA’s central warehouse and its Storing structure which can be determined by the background of the warehouse working structure.Central warehouse is defined as a single place where all the materials and products are stored. Doka has one of the world’s biggest industrial area and is a leading producer and seller of formworks and construction equipment. DOKA was founded in 1960. Since then DOKA have increased their production almost ten folds.
Which required introduction of various efficient production technologies and large investments.In recent years Doka’s warehouse have undergone many structural changes and currently its housing more than 2000 small and big size material combined, which have different characteristics and cost.The workers of Doka’s central warehouse have highlighted the lack of efficiency in the workflow where they have to move across the warehouse to retrieve different materials for storing and loading in their daily operation. On the other hand, Doka wants to increase the number of deliveries to meet the market requirement. Due to which more workforce and extra time is needed.PROBLEM STATEMENTDoka considers its current inventory storage and space allocation in its warehouse is ineffective and it is going to create bigger bottlenecks when the delivery is material is increased.
At present warehouse personals must travel long distance for material that are frequently handled, and the number of picking these frequent moving materials is frequent in a day. These materials are stored in several places, which can lead to increased transportation and waste of time. If these material are not available in one place close to the outbound delivery the picker is forced to move to the next storage and search for it.There is another problem with the obsolete parts which are stored for longer period which are not in demand. These parts can be used as spare parts for the older machine but they are kept between the main inventory.In the context of movement of warehouse worker, some parts of the warehouse are blocked from unauthorized personnel, which means external worker cannot pass through those places.
Which hinders in the material movement. However, there are still large area of the warehouse that external workers can use for material transfer and personal movement.Another problem is with the working culture of the workers where they are not fully trained. One example is to reduce the time warehouse personals don’t take printout of the order coming from commercial department and just pick and load the material.
Due to this reduction of step by them error in delivery is frequent and there is a difference between the inventory level in the system and in actual. These issues can lead to major problems in near future.Research AimThe aim of this graduation project is to analyse whether article placement could be optimized for a more efficient outflow of inventory items. The result of the work should lead to increased picking efficiency in conjunction with the minimized number of steps for the warehouse worker. The problem should be mapped in the initial mode and then create the conditions for finding an effective future solution.
What character and classification should determine materials position in the inventory?How can a more efficient inventory storage structure be developed?Research ObjectivesThe objective of this graduation project is to investigate how DOKA can optimize the Outbound inventory for its central warehouse. The survey should result in a stock structure that will reduce the workload on workers and reduce unnecessary movement of material inside the warehouse, based on the current situation. Research Questions1. how to optimization the inventory of DOKA by using multi-criteria analysis?
