Grocery Warehouse Layout and Equipment for Maximum Productivity

Excerpts from the report Introduction: Efficient warehousing is important in moving food and other grocery store items from producers and processors to the retail store and consumers at the lowest possible cost. It involves unloading and receiving rail car and motortruck lots of merchandise, moving them into the warehouse storage locations, the assembly of items in quantities ordered by retailers, and the loading of delivery trucks. Approximately, 4,000 items are stocked in the typical grocery warehouse, and it is necessary that each of these items be available for the assembly of retailer orders. The primary objectives of this study were: (1) To determine the most advantageous place to locate the receiving and shipping docks, repack room, offices, and support columns; (2) to evaluate the basic systems of order selection line length, aisle width, fixed and floating slots, and to describe the procedure for laying out and placing merchandise in the warehouse; (3) to describe and evaluate the materials-handling equipment used in modern grocery warehouses; and (4) to present warehouse layouts for a small, medium, and large size grocery distributor to illustrate research findings