Improvement of inventory storage layout / Qhaleila Salim

Solo Labeller (M) Technology Sdn. Bhd. (SLMSB) is a small, independent manufacturing company that produces disproportionately high number of parts in very limited space of stock area. As such, SLMSB has faced significant challenges in organizing their finished parts and WlP efficiently in meeting the growing demands of machine orders. One of the main problems they encountered was too much time wasted for traveling and searching for the correct parts to be retrieved. This indirectly has increased the inventory and production costs due to the delayed machine delivery orders. As part of the this study, the stock area was investigated, and some improvements have been proposed using visual representation which depicted the critical racks, critical paths and waste occurred in term of time and distance. The visualizations helped to collect consensus as to the main area of inefficiency and to determine the appropriate layout and rack reorganization in the department. The proposed improved layout was based on grouped parts by their sub-assemblies and pooled together high frequency picked items nearer to the machine assembly area with easy-to-reach shelves locations. The implementation of the improved layout has resulted in approximately 15 percent reduction of travel distance, 34 percent reduction of walking time and 26 percent reduction of searching time