Stores or Warehouse Design and Operations: Assessing its Effectiveness, Case Study of Regional Medical Stores, Kumasi

Storing is an integral part of every logistics systems and plays a vital role in providing a desired level of customer service at the lowest possible cost. Storage and operations are linked in that, the producer or manufacturer sends the ordered products or items to the purchaser who receives and stores them and finally distributes or serves its customers. There is therefore the need for those units to operate together to serve the markets (various districts) to have value for money and customer satisfaction.More so, determining the size and number of warehouse facilities are interrelated decisions in that they have an inverse relationship; that is, as the number of warehouse increases, the average size of each warehouse decrease. The general trend is to have fewer, but larger warehouses in an organization’s distribution system.In addition, one of the more important decisions facing logistics executives is how to determine the size and number of organization’s warehouses. To this effect, where should these facilities be located? Finally, each warehouse must be laid out and designed properly in order to maximize efficiency and productivity.Warehouse stores all products, where these distribution centers (DC) hold minimum inventories and predominantly high-demand items (Stock, 1993). These warehouses handle most products in four cycles (receive, store, ship and pick). Warehousing is used for the storage of inventories during all phases of the logistics process. In simple terms, two basic types of inventory exist: (1). Raw materials