Implementation of lean warehousing to improve warehouse performance of plastic packaging company

Warehouse activities affect the operations in the business process of a cosmetic plastic packaging company especially the production floor since the activities have connected each other. The company has problems in maximizing the storage space and eliminating the floor stock because of inaccuracy of warehouse stock data processing and inappropriate stock placement. So that, there are several types of waste in the warehouse activities from receiving, put away, storing, and order/material picking. The problem will be solved by using lean warehousing. The collected data of raw material storage, WIP storage and finished goods storage will be visualized using value stream mapping (VSM) and process activity mapping (PAM). Then, the warehouse performance is measured. From the VSM, PAM and performance measure, the waste can be identified. The wastes in the raw material storage are overproduction, inventory, defect, transportation, waiting, excess processing and motion. Wastes in WIP and finished goods storage are inventory, defect, transportation, waiting, excess processing, and motion waste. The improvement plans are to allocate the special stocks, subleveling the small quantity items, warehouse mapping based on FSN (Fast moving, Slow moving, and Non-moving) classification, creating warehouse regulation and improving transfer officer movement. The warehouse performance after improvement shows that the financial and cycle time indicators decrease while utilization, quality and productivity indicators increase. By using lean techniques, inventory accuracy can be increased, order picking errors can be reduced, processing time can be reduced, and warehouse space can be streamlined.