Improvement of the volumetric occupation of the vehicles in the transport warehouse-stores in a food retailer

Abstract

This project was developed in a food retail company with a complex distribution system, with several distribution centres located in Portugal, different temperature requirements for their products and different dimension store formats. The aim of the work was to analyze procedures to increase the height of loading units to improve the volumetric occupancy rate of the trucks, which depends mainly on the relationship between the number of pallets transported in each vehicle and its volume. After analyzing and diagnosing the picking, loading and unloading operations, it was found that the volumetric occupancy rate of the vehicles was 48.5%, which means that more than half of the truck is empty. To increase this indicator, two strategies were proposed to be implemented: the revision of the current volume and weight limits; and the consolidation of different categories in the same pallet for the small format store. After conducting pilot tests, it was estimated, for each of these strategies, an increase of 0.8% on volumetric occupancy rate, and an increase of a potential gain was obtained of more than 577,908 €/year.