Warehouse Management Problem and a KPI Approach: a Case Study

Abstract

Warehouse and inventory management is a recurring issue in many of the different supplychains in diverse industries, where the constant changes in the markets have a direct impacton the management of warehouses and inventories, either generating over-stocks or shortages.This paper presents a case study on warehouse and inventory management control. Thecompany under study was having problems in this area, where over-stocks were generatedfrequently, leading to various incidents, such as having to store finished and packaged productin unsuitable places, with the associated risk of deterioration. To deal with this problem,control tools based on the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) concept were developed. To thisend, the corresponding problem and the information management process within the SupplyChain department had to be analyzed. In this case, it was observed that the databases werenot synchronized, therefore strategies were proposed to systematize the collection and updating of data. In addition, to summarize the information, we proceeded to the implementationof an interactive form that facilitates the visualization and interpretation of the evolution ofthe process, and to be able to apply an efficient control on it, and thus to propose correctiveactions supported by evidence.