Warehouse Operation Efficiency

Transforms warehouse layouts into an interactive dashboard, empowering managers to redesign stock placement, cut picker travel time, and optimize both labor and inventory capacity.

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Business Context (Why is this project?)

The warehouse team struggled with inefficient pick routes and missed KPIs due to a poor layout and lack of visibility into real-time operations. High-frequency items were scattered, causing staff to zigzag through long routes, wasting time and labour.

Objective (What is it for?)

This project aimed to build a visual, data-driven dashboard that would:

  1. Provide spatial visibility into warehouse activity and layout.
  2. Track order-picking frequency by location.
  3. Support strategic stock placement (e.g., moving fast-moving items to floor-level shelves).
  4. Optimize pick routes to reduce travel time and increase labor efficiency.

Key Insights Delivered (What does data tell?)

  1. Identified high-activity zones within the warehouse based on picking frequency (darker red areas on the heatmap indicate busier locations).
  2. Highlighted inefficient pick paths that caused excessive walking time for staff.
  3. Showed temporal peaks in activity, enabling better labour planning.
  4. Visualized opportunities to:
  • Relocate frequently picked items to floor-level, high-access zones.
  • Store similar items near each other to minimize walking time.
  • Reorganize picking sequences and optimize routes to meet KPIs.
  • Managed inventory and optimized storage by grouping items for the same customer together to reduce operational time.

Business Impact (So What?)

  1. Enabled warehouse managers to redesign stock placement based on actual usage patterns—not assumptions.
  2. Reduced picker travel distance and time, directly supporting improved labor productivity and order fulfillment KPIs.
  3. Informed staffing decisions by visualizing activity trends over time.

Scalability & Future Use (What Else?)

Provided a scalable visual model that could be applied to:

  • Other warehouse locations
  • Inventory control efforts
  • Cycle count accuracy analysis
  • Physical stock monitoring and reconciliation.

Tools & Approach (How was it done?)

  1. Excel (Layout Mapping): Drafted a digital map of the warehouse using X and Y coordinates to represent bin/rack locations.
  2. Excel (Operational Data): Compiled daily operational reports, including order number, item, quantity, time stamps, and storage locations.
  3. Tableau: o Mapped the physical layout of the warehouse using the coordinates. o Visualized pick frequency heatmaps across different storage zones. o Created time-series dashboards to analyse activity by day, week, and month.

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