Ensuring the desired operational efficiency of a large warehouse requires proper planning of the layout for the entire assortment, which may consist of many thousands of products. Increasing warehouse operational efficiency can be achieved in three ways: through order management (splitting them into several picking tasks, multi-picking, etc.), optimization of the picking path, and reorganization of product placement (e.g., through classification and division of goods into groups). Product classification is performed to obtain a division into groups corresponding to the importance—significance—of the stored products. Subsequently, when planning the layout of goods in the warehouse, the arrangement is designed to ensure the shortest path from the picking/dispatch zone to the most important products.
Among the methods and tools used for the classification and placement of products in a warehouse, one can distinguish those that consider only one criterion and those that consider a greater number of them. Their selection depends mainly on the product storage system and the method of order picking.
Conducted studies of Polish literature related to product classification and their placement in a warehouse have shown significant gaps compared to foreign research. Domestic publications most often address issues related to classic ABC and XYZ analyses, as well as the warehouse layout itself and storage methods. In foreign literature, however, one can find more such publications, as well as many studies on classic product classification methods and their advanced counterparts. The literature review allowed for the identification of currently used methods for planning product placement and development trends, which was the subject of the publication [10, 11].
ABC analysis is the most commonly used analysis that allows for classifying products into groups of varying importance (more or less priority). Classic ABC analysis allows for dividing products into three groups with percentage shares of: A – 80%, B – 15%, C – 5%. Variations of this analysis can be found that distinguish more groups with appropriately adjusted percentage shares. ABC analysis is a single-criterion analysis, so it is not possible to take several features into account simultaneously. However, it is possible to perform the analysis multiple times—each time using a different feature as a criterion—and then “merge” the results by applying appropriate weights for each feature (analysis result). The aforementioned analysis is most often performed according to the criteria presented in [2, 7, 9, 14], namely:
– sales value or sales profit,
– picking frequency,
– dispatch volume,
– weight and volume.
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Source: Logistyka Magazine