Warehouse and inventory management of photocopier and spare parts

• Main Author: Vasudevan, Ashwinkumar
• Other Authors: Rajesh Piplani
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Manufacturing
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75936
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Warehouse management is an important process as it directly affects the overall supply chain of any organization, which includes controlling the inventory, providing an excellent customer service and improving the productivity of the organization. Warehouse management process can be customized based on the size and needs of an organization. In this study, a small-scale medium enterprise (SME) based out of Singapore is chosen. As there is no process flow that is followed, the company is facing issues in product traceability and managing their inventory. In order to address this problem various research papers, articles, journals, blogs and expert opinions are studied. This is to understand the best practices followed for efficient warehouse management, what companies have done in the past to overcome their problems and the optimal ordering quantity method. The pros and cons of barcode and RFID are analyzed to find out which is suitable for an SME. Based on the research and consultation with the company director, a warehouse management process flow has been developed. As the company has limited access to resources and with the current volume of business also being less, the company is not in a position to buy a software to address these concerns. So, a template has been prepared for inventory management and customer relationship management using Microsoft Excel. 1D barcode has been implemented to address product traceability problems. A customer relationship framework has been prepared, ways to improve the existing business has been discussed and based on the capabilities of the company, new avenues of growth streams have also been identified. The results chapter has proved the usefulness of this study. On-time delivery and order accuracy rate have improved due to a significant reduction in time taken to identify the right spare part. The cost of sales has decreased as the monthly sales have increased. The warehouse is more organized now and it has resulted in saving some space. This study focuses on business process improvement for the company.