Improving Operation Performance of Warehouse System in Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2020-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Terminal operations consist of the motion of full and empty containers between gateways of the
terminals. In this study the problem focus on loading/unloading operations, driver‟s waits due to
customs clearance and other related processes, lack of technical and technological capacity as a
result loading/unloading operation becomes tardy and causes labor productivity issues,
operators‟ schedule reliability, and various types of equipment utilization decreases the service
quality and customer satisfaction.
The objective of this paper is to identify the current practices and challenges in the warehouse
and to set strategies that optimize and improve warehouse operation performance using ARENA
simulation. The scope of study is focusing on Kality dry port and terminal at Addis Ababa.
The procedures include data gathering, model building, simulation, verification, and validation
and performance analysis. Then the model is simulated using the actual container and warehouse
operation through collecting data which include the daily empty and full in/out containers,
service requirement, parameters, operation schedule and port machine breakdown. The output of
the simulation is generated in a form of report. The results show that the percentage error of
ARENA model is less than 5% as targeted.
This research propose three major decision options(scenarios) to improve the system. The
first scenario is changing level of resource at port operation with higher number of waiting. The
second one is avoiding unnecessary duplication resource from processes with low capacity
utilization to increase the operation output and capacity utilization. Lastly, third scenario
focused on merge similar operations through reduced resource to 12 from existing 25 and
percentage of productivity per operator for full-in: full-out operation and empty-in: empty- out
operation is improved to 84.72% and 63.19% from existing 48.36% and 41.11% respectively.
Finally, the research has recommended the enterprise use from creating different
opportunities and overcome the challenges as well as the optimization of the dry port
warehouse operation system.
Description
Keywords
Arena, Containers, Dry port, Loading, Operation, Performance, Simulation, Unloading