Warehouse in a warehouse

The Airpower Service Center warehouse in Wilrijk, Belgium, has experienced a tremendous growth over the last ten years. The initial warehouse was developed on the operations principles “customer first, reliability, flexibility, quality and efficiency”. This resulted in a storage strategy with parts being stocked in different areas based on their physical properties.

The challenge of implementing LEAN in a warehouse environment required a radical change of mind. The LEAN warehousing strategy has been based on three pillars:

• minimal space occupation
• minimal travel distances
• minimal material handling

All warehouse processes have been reviewed keeping in mind the daily strong fluctuating workload. By definition, a small warehouse is more efficient than a large warehouse. So the main strategy in lean warehousing is to apply the advantages of a small warehouse in a bigger warehouse. The starting point is the “customer order profile” defined by the parts regularly ordered together (“product affinity”) and the timeslot per customer (“cut-off”).

1. The warehouse has been divided in zones maximizing the number of order lines to be picked in one zone. The assignment of orders to pickers and the routing changed. Order lines will be combined in a minimal number of zones in the warehouse. However for time critical orders the traditional indicator “time slot per customer” is maintained. As a result, travel distances have decreased with 40%, compared to the pre-Warehouse in a warehouse situation.
2. Non-value adding actions have been excluded during the “put away” process; only three sizes of storage boxes remain available. Floating pick-locations have been created, reducing the number of replenishment handlings. The result is an extra increase of 5% in productivity in the picking.
3. The supplier delivers the parts directly in these boxes, minimizing material handling and taking into account the ergonomics (weight/height) of warehouse employees.

“Thanks to the sustainable efforts of all warehouse employees we have been able to maintain our current strengths, add lean principles and finally service the customer better,” says Jeroen Meeusen, Warehouse Manager Airpower Service Center.