Abstract
Integration of plural local DCs (Distribution Centers) into a large-scale DC with automatic warehouse system is considered as an effective strategy among logistics industries for responding to the diversifying needs of customers and markets, optimizing distribution operations and resource saving. However, as numerous items must be handled in such integrated DC, adequate design of the components such as warehouse, sorting-packing lines and their operation system is a critical issue for maintaining competitive advantage. This paper, focusing on the last issue, discusses the utility of TCM (Target Chasing Method) based dispatching policies for bottleneck management of entire process. Various PCVs (Pseudo Control Variables) are examined to utilized, which represent the state of the system, easy to observe but indirectly controllable (e.g. number of items and waiting time in queue, work load rate in each sorting-packing line). Performance analysis is examined by simulation experiments and obtained results suggest that smooth flow of items in each stage of sorting-packing line is realized by the proposed dispatching policies. Especially, dispatching policy for Just-In-Time delivery to customers that intends to adapt delivery time to customers, reveals the weak portion of the entire system.
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