• Facility sizing
• Flooring (loading and flatness)
• Clear height
• Bay sizes
• Temperature controlled
• The number of dock doors/cross dock
• Truck parking/ staging areas
• Office requirement
• Power loads (current and future)
• Lighting (type and location)
• Sustainable design considerations
• Life safety
• Ventilation

• Load unitisation
• Greater quantity of goods per journey & storage equipment
• Better use of warehouse space
• Basically warehousing and logistics uses cube utilisation to calculate it’s use of space within storage area, trailer, or container. Cube utilization is generally calculated as a percentage of total space or of total "usable" space.
• Use of standard handling
• Speed up loading/unloading
• Minimise damage & pilferage

• Best use of space
• Not holding obsolete stock
• This stock take up space therefore having the right quantity of products is really very important.
• Minimum stock level
• Stock level should be keep low as other the taking up space it also will incur other cost. But by having low inventory, person-in-charge should also be more careful as if the demand is not constant it might lead to out of stock.
• Use of head room/mezzanine floors
• Minimum gangways number & width

• Fixed storage area will take up more space as if the product is not available at the moment; the area will be leaving empty. And in another way if it is a random stock, they can place the product there as long as there is a suitable place.

• Example: not having pipes like that, that will affect the storage of goods. From the picture below you can see that this warehouse have actually have a very good positioning of their pipes as u will not see pipes popping out from somewhere of nowhere.

• Put high movement pasts close together
• By having storage plan based on product movement is a very good way to minimise goods movement within the warehouse as you can see from the picture below the primary aisle that is use to storage high-volume product is being place at the centre area and for those that does not have that much volume they will be place more to the side of the warehouse.

• Separate reserve stock & order picking
• This depends a lot on how the design of layout will be set.
• Use appropriate unit loads
• Use equipment to minimise personnel movement
• Being machine the error rate will be normally lesser than us. Therefore with lesser human contact with the product the least chance of it being damage, loss, or even theft.
• Use computerised techniques

• “U” flow for internal movement
• Incoming & outgoing function are adjacent
• Through flow for internal movement
• Incoming & outgoing are at opposite ends
• External flow
• Material, vehicle, & personnel movement
• This will need to depend on how the design of vehicle movement and parking of vehicle so that they can maximise the land.

• Careful use of mechanical & manual handling equipment
• Using sign like signboard, banner, making staff wearing safety boots or even using warning sound & light up the warehouse to make it brighter are some of the way to increase the safety level within the warehouse.

Here are some of the sign that you maybe have since before, but you maybe not know that this sign board could actually play an important role in the safety aspect. The following are some examples:

• Fire risk prevention
• Minimise damage, loss and theft
• Damage, loss and theft are equally meaning that there is an increase with cost. Therefore minimising all this costs is very important. By having equipment in helping up to process work it will help to reduce the chance of all this damage.
• Warehouse temperature, humidity & ventilation
• Temperature: It is important to have right temperature in order not to spoil the product. As if the temperature is too high or too low of the product it would cause damage to the product and this will actually lead to a lot other situation like out of stock, delay in production.

• Ventilation: This will be needed, for engine fumes (gas or diesel fork lift trucks), fumes from shrink wrapping, or to remove hydrogen gas released during truck battery charging.
• Lighting, location marking & colour coding
• Lighting: This would help operations workers to make out colour codes, product and location identification letters and numbers. This often is located high up in the storage racking, and it’s for safe truck driving and general movement within the warehouse.

As you can see from the picture from your left that this warehouse have very good lighting as the whole warehouse is being light up compare to the picture on the right which look so dark.
Minimum total cost

• Order picking: 40%+
• Reserve storage: 30%-
• Incoming function: 15%
• Outgoing function: 15%

In costing warehouse are looking at how well their can utilities their resources. With the proper use they could reduce the cost.

Warehouses encounter constraints like:

• Capital budget,
• Warehouse building structure,
• The flow of good that the warehouse is handling.

A good designer will apply practical experience to design a warehouse that delivers appropriate:
Functionality
Performance
Cost effectiveness
Security
Image/customer approval
Potential to support growth
Flexibility to handle change

Before any layout design is determine we need to know how our company are going to be function. By knowing what we need can help us in having the right chosen of flow within the warehouse in order to have an effective warehouse operation.

A Warehouse layout is a floor plan to facilitate product flow and movement of handling system. Which mean it is planning ahead of time whether to adopt which kind of flow can be U flow or through flow. It’s ultimate flow is to shorten the route regardless of what flow is use. And a better layout meaning more warehouse space.
A warehouse design is to develop an integrated system for product flow and pre-determined which material handling equipment to be use in the future

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Product Flow depends on lot sizes, unit load sizes, material handling equipment and strategies, layout arrangement, and building configuration.
The flow of the product has an impact on the various key warehouse functions and the productivity of the total warehouse. The various product flows are one way flow (through) and U flow pattern

U Flow Pattern

In a U flow pattern, the receiving dock and the shipping dock are adjacent. This pattern make it simple to administrative, minimizing movement as the location of the fast moving product lines are locate near to the shipping dock. Furthermore, it better utilized the dock space and related handling equipment.
The picture above shows a U flow pattern adapted by a warehouse. The incoming of goods will first reach the receiving dock, where goods are unloaded and checked whether the goods received are in the right quantity, quality, any damage or shortage. This will include the recording of the received goods and discrepancies. Then unpack or repack the goods and transfer them to the desired location.
After the receiving area, goods are transferred straight to the main storage or (reserve area). Firstly, The goods are placed in reserve storage area, then goods location are confirm to control function, it is followed by the issuing of goods to replenish order picking stock.
Next to the main storage is the order picking area or (forward store) is where order pickers select the goods in small keep units (SKU) according to customer’s order. After the picking it is pack and check before transferring to the conveyor lines.
The conveyor line is the marshalling area whereby goods are assemble according to customer or by vehicle load. After assembling of goods, the physical loading of goods into the truck at the shipping dock takes place. The vehicle will despatch as schedule. Therefore, the product movement makes a U pattern through the facility.
In between of receiving and shipping docks, there is cross docking activity. It is a process of moving the goods from receiving dock to shipping dock which bypass the main storage thus reducing holding cost and cost which is related to order fulfilment and material handling. Cross docking requires proper processes, systems and supply chain relationships must be in place to cross dock successfully.

Through Flow

In a through flow pattern, it’s loading and unloading of docks are at the opposite end of the warehouse. This pattern requires the product to travel the entire length of the facility from the receiving docks to shipping docks. It is the simplest and it separate receiving, shipping and crews.
The above picture shows a through flow pattern. Goods are unloaded at the unloading bay and at the incoming goods area is where unpacking, checking takes place. Then transferred the goods to the main storage area whereby the goods are placed according to the frequency of the product lines. The higher the frequency of the product lines it will be place at Rack A , the lowest shall be place at rack C. And rack A is usually placed near to the next activities which is the order picking so as to minimise travel distance taken to proceed an order thus save time.

Order picking area also place the high frequency goods near the marshalling area for ease of assembly and transfer the goods faster to the outgoing area into the loading docks.
Through flow also facilitate cross docking activity as it bypass the main storage to the outgoing goods area as shown above.

For different goods and area there are different types of storage system, and it is to have an effective warehouse operation. It is also being constraint by the building height. The following is the various types of storage systems used.

Mobile Storage system


it is a back to back adjustable pallet racking on electically powered base frames and rails meaning the entire rack is moveable. It has good space utilization and is able to acess to every pallet. the aisle can be open up whenever it is needed, suitable for low throughput product and it is able to carry large and heavy product. A number of safety systems are built in to protect personnel and stored materials

Palletised Live Storage

It incorporate roller track sections placed on a highest part of the rolling to allow the pallet to slide over them and taken out at the lower end. This storage is ideal for high throughput