Warehouses receive incoming material from suppliers and ship orders to customers. A warehouse must provide adequate space for its functional areas and must also provide appropriate storage and handling systems to fill customers orders efficiently. In this particular prototype exercise, the student is faced with a warehouse design problem. The exercise involves a warehouse with forward and reserve storage areas. Reserve storage is designed for bulk storage of most items.
Forward storage is used for retrieval of relatively small quantities of items ordered by customers.
At the same time, too large a forward area results in inefficient use of space, since reserve storage is generally more efficient in those terms. The type of storage equipment chosen for the reserve area has an impact on cost and the ability to store items efficiently. Finally, the amount of each product stored in the forward area determines how efficiently the order filling process will be. To summarize, the student must make decisions regarding space allocation and equipment selection and sizing. The student interacts with the VIS through a web-based user interface.