Development of a layout for effective use of space in a block stacking warehouse

Abstract: Historically, the paper market has consisted of few customers with high demands. However, the market has changed and nowadays it consists of many customer with lower demands, which causes problems in the warehouse process of Braviken Papermill. The main problem is that the utilization rates in the storage bays are low due to the relatively large bays compared to the order quantities. The purpose of this project is to develop a new set of bays that fits the current market and increases the utilization rates. The goal of the new set is to decrease the amount of manual operations and instead use the full potential of the allocation system.    The new set of bays consist of four bay types, dimensioned for 2, 4, 8 and 16 reel stacks respectively. Several experiments are done, and the new set of bays performs better than the current one, in terms of the utilization rates for storage events in the bays. The average utilization rate is significantly higher for the new set compared to the current. A decrease in effective storage space can be compensated by an increased degree of utilization. Also, it is beneficial with more and smaller bays in a market situation like the one of Holmen Paper.