Designing and Implementing a System for Improving the Receiving Process
Designing and Implementing a System for Improving the Receiving Process
Our Project takes place in Arçelik A.Ş. Ankara Dishwasher Plant. The current system of the facility has some weaknesses, and there are some symptoms and complaints that are observed in ramp area and storage areas. The orders are given regularly by Production Planning Department, but the exact arrival times of the orders are not scheduled by Arçelik. Therefore, the ramp area, which is the problematic side of current system due to capacity limitations, becomes the bottleneck of the system. Moreover, Arçelik plans to increase its production capacity in next few years, this will probably lead to a more serious capacity problem in the ramp area. Unloaded materials are kept in any empty place in the ramp area until they are sent to the storage areas.
In addition, materials which cannot be put into storage systems immediately are being kept in the ramp area. The empty polyboxes, which come from the production line, are also being kept in the ramp area until the relevant supplier’s vehicle come to receive them. The situation causes congestion for forklift and pallet-truck traffic. As a result of the inconveniences in ramp area; trucks which come from suppliers to unload raw materials wait several hours. Moreover, the trucks are not prioritized according to a certain algorithm. For instance, if there are nine trucks that are waiting to be unloaded, company does not use an algorithm for ordering them. Only if the material is in emergency for manufacturing, the truck that carries the material is unloaded first.
According to current system’s symptoms and complaints, our problem and scope are determined; the aim of this project is to reduce the long waiting times and accumulation of materials in the ramp area, caused by lack of standardization in warehouse management and ramp traffic during storage and handling processes which start with the arrival of raw materials and terminate in production line.
When considering the problem definition, there should be assigned critical objectives. The project aims to prevent accumulation of the materials in the ramp area, to provide efficient usage of warehouse, and to reduce the waiting times during loading and unloading of trucks that is caused by traffic congestion and unavailable space in the storage area. So, planning the existing ramp traffic, determining the type of materials and their amounts to put in the storage areas, and increasing the effective usage of the ramp area will be the critical objectives of the project.
In the light of the project’s objectives, the main outcome at the end of the project will be reducing waiting times while loading and unloading of trucks that is caused by traffic congestion and unavailable space in the storage area by developing a systematized ramp appointment system.