Four Methods of Assembling Institutional Grocery Orders

Excerpts from the report: This report is based on research to aid institutional wholesale grocers in reducing their warehousing costs by adopting the most efficient order-selection system suited to their needs. Order assembly is the basic operation that determines much of the design of an overall warehouse system and requires a large part of the total labor needed to operate such a system. The four order-assembly methods discussed in this report are conventional, stock selector, "U" bay, and batch selection. Conventional selection consists of an order selector picking one or more orders and placing the assembled cases on a four-wheel handtruck. In stock selector selection a specialized piece of materials-handling equipment called a stock selector is utilized. In "U" bay selection a combination of tow tractors and conventional pallet racks arranged in a series of bays is used. Batch selection includes pallet jacks, pallets, bulk selection of orders, and a crew reselection, checking, and loading operation at the truck dock. The objectives of this study were as follows: (1) To describe each order-selection method. (2) To describe typical warehouse layouts used by wholesale grocers employing each order-selection system. (3) To determine warehouse labor costs for order assembly, receiving, restocking, checking, and truck loading for each of the four order-selection methods. (4) To determine other associated costs, such as equipment and space, using specific size firms as examples. (5) To examine the relative merits of each system.