Kriterier för automation vid inlagring : Ett beslutsunderlag i valet av artikelplacering

Sammanfattning: The role of warehouse in the value stream, plays a significant part in how well a company can satisfy the requirements of a customer. To be able to support the demand of the customers, production companies are forced to produce a bigger variety of models in the product range, which results in an increasing assortment. With an effective stock keeping, there is a potential to reduce waste and increase profitability. In the choice of warehouse-design, warehouse-operations have the opportunity of choosing between a number of different designs containing manual and automated put away.It has become common that companies are choosing a combination of automated and manual processes. With this combination of processes, the companies are faced with choices about stock locations. With the help of well developed criterias about stock locations, there is a potential to achieve a more effective put away. The purpose of the study has been formulated as ”Investigate when automation in warehouse management makes the put away process in a central warehouse more efficient”.   Through a case study on a warehouse, located in Nässjö, this report will answer the research questions regarding which of the manual and automated put away processes to use. The research questions are: Which criteria affect the decision of automated or manual put away? Based on the criteria that are raised in research question 1, when is it more efficient to store carton in AS/RS in comparison with manual picking with truck in pallet racking? The research questions wish to lift criteria as a basis for decision making and when it is more effective to use automated put away. The warehouse that this study is based on is using both automated and manual materials handling. The specific automation system that has been the basis for this study’s result is AutoStore. This report has a qualitative approach, the methods that has been used for collecting data are interviews, observations and document studies.   Dimension, process time and utilization were the three criteria that are presented in the result. Based on the pallets limit of space in the automated system, the dimension of the article is the first criteria. In addition to the article’s measurements, the articles shape and material of the package had an impact if the article would fit in the load carrier. The two put away processes include different operations that differ in how long they take to execute, which has an impact on the company's efficiency. One reason for the time consuming difference, turned out to be how the quantity affects the time for put away in AutoStore comparing with the constant time for manual put away. A time consuming operation in the process with AutoStore was the one with repacking for the systems pallet. The operation also turned out to affect the utilization rate, due to its measurement of a pallets fill rate.  The quantity of put away in combination with the dimensions of the article, affects the total utilization rate.   With the result, the aim of the study is to contribute to companies that contains a combination of warehouse-design with a basis for the decision making about stock locations.