POLITECNICO DI MILANO II Facolt di Ingegneria

LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT (A.Y. 2013/2014)

EXAM, 8th JULY 2014

Surname and Name: ___________________________________________ ID number:

Please notice:
- the overall marks are the simple average of the marks obtained in the single exercises;
- for multi-section exercises you find at the beginning of each section the points you get if you answer correctly;
- if necessary, introduce the missing data, justifying the choice of the value.
Exercise 1
MACCHERONI S.p.A. is a pasta manufacturer that wants to build an automated warehouse to store pallet loads (800 x 1200 x h =
1500 mm). The warehouse will be made of single deep selective racks, served by one S/R machine per aisle.
In every aisle a pallet location is identified by three values: R/L: right hand side rack/left hand side rack (with respect to the I/O
system); PLC: pallet location column (see Figure 1); SL: storage level (see Figure 1).
Consider the following design parameters:
- storage capacity not lower than 12.000 pallet locations;
- throughput capacity not lower than 100 pallet loads/h;
- maximum rack length equal to 80 m;
- maximum rack height equal to 22,5 m;
- dimensions of the bay equal to Length L = 2,8 m; Depth D = 1,3 m; Height H = 1,7 m;
- three pallet locations per bay (see Figure 1);
- input/output at the 3rd storage level;
- horizontal speed (excluding acceleration/deceleration) of the S/R machine equal to 2 m/s;
- vertical speed (excluding acceleration/deceleration) of the S/R machine equal to 0,4 m/s;
- fixed positioning time equal to 5 s;
- fixed time for the fork cycle equal to 10 s;
- acceleration + deceleration time equal to 8 s.
Assuming furthermore that:
- 40 % of the cycles are single command cycles;
- F.E.M. 9851 is applicable,
1. (24/30) You are requested to design the storage system satisfying both the storage and throughput capacity.
2. (6/30) In case you should retrieve in aisle number 1 the pallet load located in (R, 40, 10) (with the notation R/L,PLC,SL) and
assuming you want to combine this retrieval with the storage of a pallet load (dual command cycle), in which of the following empty
locations would you store the pallet load in order to minimize the extra-travel: A (R, 11, 7), B (L, 55, 11), C (L, 12, 5), D (R, 50, 4)?

Figure 1 - View of part of the storage racks

Exercise 2
The picking system of Parts S.p.A., a wholesaler of car spare parts, is a low-level picker to part system. The picking stock
is stored in a system with 20 working aisles (see the layout in Figure 2) with two levels of storage. The racks are 20 m long
and 1,8 m high. There are 2.000 items, and each of them has a dedicated storage location (all of the same size). The pickers
pick the orders by using an order picking policy and a traversal routing policy. Assuming the following:
- set-up time per picking tour: 45 s;
- fixed retrieval time per line: 5 s;
- retrieval time per piece: 3 s;
- average speed of the picker truck: 1 m/s,
assess the average time to pick an order made by 14 lines and 60 pieces in the following cases:
1. (20/30) same probability to access each of the picking locations;
2. (10/30) item allocation according to their access index, assuming 3 classes as shown in Table 1.

Class Number of items in the class Number of picked lines per year
A 200 44000
B 600 28000
C 1200 8000
Table 1 Data about the items in the four classes


4m
I/O

4m 20 m 5m 20 m 4m
m
Figure 2 - Layout of the picking system

Exercise 3
BELL is a manufacturer of Top level PCs for the European market. The product range consists of 3 main families which have the
same size and weight but different performances. BELL has 3 manufacturing plants, each one focusing on a single product family
in order to maximize the economies of scale. The company has just redesigned its distribution network moving from a
configuration with 1 echelon and 2 central warehouses to a new configuration with 1 central warehouse only. The company must
decide where to locate the new central warehouse. Assuming that:
- the 3 plants can be represented on a map with the coordinates reported in table 3;
- the annual production of the plants is reported in table 3;
- the BELLs customers (the main European retailers) can be clustered in 5 areas which have the coordinates reported in table 4;
- the annual demand per each area is reported in table 4;
- the delivery frequency is equal to 1 delivery per day (250 working days per year);
- the transportation fares, which depend on both the shipped quantity and the traveled distance, are shown in table 5.
You are requested to:
1. (24/30) find the location of the central warehouse by using the center of gravity model (for the first step of the model
consider a fare equal to 0,001 /(km*unit));
2. (6/30) calculate the transportation cost of the new configuration.

Plant X Y Annual production (units)

P1 20 45 900.000
P2 38 45 1.200.000
P3 15 52 700.000
Table 2 Coordinates (in hundreds km i.e. value x 100) and annual production of the plants

Area X Y Annual demand (units)

D1 30 53 600.000
D2 34 33 400.000
D3 9 50 300.000
D4 28 42 700.000
D5 19 40 800.000
Table 3 Coordinates (in hundreds km i.e. value x 100) and annual demand of the demand areas

Units / journey
FARES 500 - 1000 1000 - 1500 1500 - 2000 >=2000
200 - 400 0,00200 0,00160 0,00130 0,00110
400 - 600 0,00160 0,00130 0,00100 0,00080
Distance (km) 600 - 800 0,00130 0,00110 0,00090 0,00070
800 - 1000 0,00110 0,00100 0,00080 0,00065
>1000 0,00100 0,00090 0,00070 0,00060
Table 4 Transportation fares [Euro/(km*unit)]

Exercise 4
(30/30) The European distribution network of a books distributor is made of 2 central warehouses that replenish more than 500
bookshops in Europe. The logistics manager wants to assess the possibility to open a new warehouse (i.e. 3 warehouses to serve
the same overall number of Points of Sale). What are the logistics costs impacted by this choice? What are the impacts? Why?
Exercise 5
(30/30) What are the main managerial policies that can be used to improve the productivity of a picker-to-part picking system?
How does the customer order size affect the performances of the system?