Simulation And Evaluation Of Distribution Center Layout Planning

ABSTRACT:With the rapid development of the logistics industry, the logistics enterprises have increased their efforts in building distribution centers, but there are many deficiencies in layout planning and designing, especially in internal planning and designing. Owing to high cost in construction and exist investment risk, to assure the construction is scientific and reasonable, it is necessary for us to make a further research on the internal design of distribution center and determine the optimal layout scheme.The papers will try to combine the traditional distribution center layout planning theory, the modern virtual simulation technology with evaluation method. Firstly, the thesis introduce working flow and functional areas at distribution center, elaborate layout planning theory, and design distribution center layout schemes by using traditional distribution center layout planning theory. Secondly, introduce the procedures and method of building simulated model. Papers use flexsim simulation software to build model and simulate it, determine parameters of source, processor, queue, rack and transporter, and obtain the simulated data. Then, papers build evaluation indexes of distribution center layout schemes, which mainly contain facility utilization ratio, goods average staying time, work volume of unit area, average queue length. In order to get optimal layout scheme, papers utilize weighted gray correlation theory to evaluate indexes objectively and comprehensively.Finally, papers take layout planning of distribution center as an example, which uses above method. Papers design four kinds of layout schemes, get simulated results, and evaluate good or bad of each scheme, which verify the feasibility of this method. It can provide theoretical and methodological support for the construction of distribution center.