Project 2 · Distribution center layout
Warehouse Slotting Tool
Pickers walk from the dock to each slot and back. Put the fastest movers closest to the dock and the building gets smaller without moving a wall. Before: SKUs in random slots. After: velocity slotting.
Weekly pick distance
Picks x steps from the dock (aisle + bay + 2 per level).
Reduction
Random slotting to velocity slotting.
SKUs moved
Of 200 SKUs, from their random slot to a new one.
SKU list
Now showing Sample: 200 SKUs, seeded Pareto picks
Columns: sku, picks_per_week, length_in, width_in, height_in. Up to 480 carton SKUs and 120 oversize SKUs (over 12 cu ft). Parsed in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Floor map
Top 10 movers
Ranked by weekly steps saved.
- 1SKU-150A07-B11-L0 → A00-B00-L010,890605 picks
- 2SKU-016A04-B06-L2 → A00-B01-L05,629433 picks
- 3SKU-090A06-B19-L1 → A01-B01-L02,800112 picks
- 4SKU-127A04-B08-L1 → A01-B00-L02,483191 picks
- 5SKU-189A05-B10-L1 → A02-B00-L01,20080 picks
- 6SKU-066A05-B12-L2 → A00-B03-L01,18866 picks
- 7SKU-103A02-B08-L0 → A00-B02-L01,144143 picks
- 8SKU-194A06-B10-L2 → A01-B02-L01,05462 picks
- 9SKU-059A02-B15-L2 → A00-B01-L199055 picks
- 10SKU-085A00-B12-L2 → A02-B01-L079361 picks
All 200 SKUs
| SKU | Old slot → new slot | Picks / week | Volume (cu ft) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SKU-150 | A07-B11-L0 → A00-B00-L0 | 605 | 0.9 |
| SKU-016 | A04-B06-L2 → A00-B01-L0 | 433 | 1.4 |
| SKU-127 | A04-B08-L1 → A01-B00-L0 | 191 | 1.4 |
| SKU-103 | A02-B08-L0 → A00-B02-L0 | 143 | 3.0 |
| SKU-090 | A06-B19-L1 → A01-B01-L0 | 112 | 0.5 |
| SKU-189 | A05-B10-L1 → A02-B00-L0 | 80 | 2.5 |
| SKU-062 | A00-B06-L0 → A00-B00-L1 | 76 | 1.0 |
| SKU-066 | A05-B12-L2 → A00-B03-L0 | 66 | 1.1 |
| SKU-194 | A06-B10-L2 → A01-B02-L0 | 62 | 0.9 |
| SKU-085 | A00-B12-L2 → A02-B01-L0 | 61 | 0.2 |
| SKU-045 | A03-B08-L0 → A03-B00-L0 | 59 | 0.6 |
| SKU-059 | A02-B15-L2 → A00-B01-L1 | 55 | 2.1 |
What I'd tell the ops manager
Of everything here, this is the cheapest to put in place. No capital, no new equipment. You move cartons between bays on a weekend. On the 200 SKU sample, random slotting walks 60,095 steps a week. Velocity slotting walks 16,762. That is a 72.1% cut, or 43,333 steps a week that nobody has to take. Per pick it is 15.3 steps down to 4.3. It works because picks are not spread evenly. The top 20% of these SKUs carry 69% of the picks. A fast mover in a bad slot costs you every week, not once. SKU-150 gets picked 605 times a week and the random layout put it 18 steps from the dock. Moving that one item to the dock face saves 10,890 steps a week. That concentration is also the practical point. The move list says 199 of 200 SKUs change slots, but the top 10 moves alone account for 28,171 of the 43,333 steps saved, about two thirds. You do not need a full reslot to get most of this. Work the top movers list from the top and stop when the crew runs out of weekend. Two honest limits. The sample fills 200 of 600 slots, so velocity slotting can pack everything near the dock. A fuller building has to spread out and the reduction gets smaller. And 16 of these SKUs are over 12 cubic feet, so they sit in the bulk aisles under either policy. An oversize item does not fit in a carton bay no matter how fast it moves. Distance here is aisle plus bay plus two per level, counted from the dock at aisle 0, bay 0. It assumes a picker heads back toward the dock rather than batching several picks per trip. Upload your own SKU list and the same math runs on your building.