Employing Theory of Constraints in Warehousing Operation: Case Study at Harald Pihl AB

Background: Theory of warehouse operation are a well explored area but it seems that warehouse manager have a hard time to understand what solutions to adapt to improve their warehouse. Theory of Constraints(ToC) are a young philosophy regarding improvements work that have been employed to many different business areas. Warehouse manager would need a method to evaluate what solutions to implement to the warehouse and there is no found papers where ToC is employed to facilitate this evaluation. Purpose: The purpose is to see if ToC can be employed for improvements work in a warehouse. At the same time the three research question should be answered to clarify what approaches and tools within ToC to use for different part of the improvements work. Problem definition: To know if ToC can be employed in a warehouse operation a case study was executed. The company in the case study have a warehouse that faces challenges in the near future due to increase sale and that the warehouse maximum capacity almost is reached, for how it operate today. The warehouse have low level of strategies. The warehouse have to get more effective and efficient to be able to maintain the service level in the future. Method: Warehouse operation have been studied at the university and a high level of knowledge in that field exist but low level of knowledge for ToC exist. The project will therefore start by studying ToC so it later can be successfully employed in the warehouse operation in the case study. Conclusions: From the case study it is clear that ToC could be employed for improvements work for wear house operations. By following the approach provided by ToC the work could be carried out in an efficient way. It was identified which tools that was appropriate to use for different parts of the improvements work