TY - THES

T1 - Development of a labour management tool for an automated warehouse

AU - Rodler, Bernd

N1 - embargoed until 19-05-2015

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - An automated distribution centre can also be regarded as a production system like a manufacturing plant. The input factors labour, material and production facilities have to be synchronised accurately to generate the expected output. Due to the fact that within an automated warehouse the processes are operating close to the optimum, we can only expect minor improvements in productivity when doing further process optimisation. As the companies are interested in a further increase of the economic efficiency, the input factor labour becomes the focal point of interest because this factor has the largest portion of the warehouse costs. So, within the scope of this master thesis we have to develop a concept for a labour management tool, which provides the opportunity to determine the number of operators required for a certain period of time in advance on basis of a forecast regarding the future workload. In addition to this, the operators have to be distributed to the single processes in accordance with the expected workload. The challenge that has to be met is to facilitate savings regarding manpower costs due to a more efficient utilisation of personnel without disrupting the material flow owing to a bottleneck situation caused by a lack of operators. The tool to be created shall be built of single modules, which are doing the required analyses of data and calculations, due to a simplification of the implementation process. The modules, which are required for doing labour management, have to be described in reference to their objective, the required input data and the method of calculation needed. Subsequently, a database prototype has to be implemented to check both the transferability of the concept into a database structure and whether the given methods of calculation are appropriate to achieve the desired results.

AB - An automated distribution centre can also be regarded as a production system like a manufacturing plant. The input factors labour, material and production facilities have to be synchronised accurately to generate the expected output. Due to the fact that within an automated warehouse the processes are operating close to the optimum, we can only expect minor improvements in productivity when doing further process optimisation. As the companies are interested in a further increase of the economic efficiency, the input factor labour becomes the focal point of interest because this factor has the largest portion of the warehouse costs. So, within the scope of this master thesis we have to develop a concept for a labour management tool, which provides the opportunity to determine the number of operators required for a certain period of time in advance on basis of a forecast regarding the future workload. In addition to this, the operators have to be distributed to the single processes in accordance with the expected workload. The challenge that has to be met is to facilitate savings regarding manpower costs due to a more efficient utilisation of personnel without disrupting the material flow owing to a bottleneck situation caused by a lack of operators. The tool to be created shall be built of single modules, which are doing the required analyses of data and calculations, due to a simplification of the implementation process. The modules, which are required for doing labour management, have to be described in reference to their objective, the required input data and the method of calculation needed. Subsequently, a database prototype has to be implemented to check both the transferability of the concept into a database structure and whether the given methods of calculation are appropriate to achieve the desired results.

KW - short-term manpower planning labour management warehouse distribution centre optimal staff alloctaion

KW - Personaleinsatzplanung bedarfsgerecht Lager Distributionszentrum automatisiert

M3 - Master's Thesis

ER -