A DYNAMIC PROCESS MODELING OF WAREHOUSE OPERATIONS

This paper presents an approach for dynamic process modeling of warehouse operations. Modeled warehouse operations include receiving raw materials, feeding materials to production, and shipping finished items. Such operations have substantial impact on the performance of inventory system, production system, delivery reliability, and the overall supply chain. The proposed approach utilizes discrete event simulation to transform a static process map into a dynamic process flow. The approach is a combination of Process Mapping, Process Measurement, and Process Simulation. It aims at defining, visualizing, measuring, and improving (streamlining) warehouse operations to better support the supply, production, and distribution operations. Used measures of performance include number of completed transactions, labor utilization, and operation cost. An example of warehouse is used to illustrate the development and application of the proposed dynamic process modeling approach.