Date of Graduation
1999
Document Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
The product life cycle begins with the feasibility study, design, manufacturing, and moves towards storage, retrieval, and distribution, ultimately ending the life in retirement. The design and manufacturing functions, in this product life cycle, are far apart from the storage, retrieval, and distribution functions. However, the effect and impact of the design function on the storability, retrieval, and distribution functions is significant. The significance is seen in the form of the costs incurred and committed to the storage infrastructure and materials handling activities. The product design parameters also influence the unit design aspects when the products are packaged as units for further distribution. This report titled “The Effect of Product Design Parameters on Effective Storability and Retrieval: A Computer Based Approach†deals with product design, packaging, storability, and retrieval and analyzes the concepts related to the above mentioned aspects. The report proposes a computer based system to integrate the product design function for effective storability and distribution, for implementation in a concurrent engineering environment. The first chapter of the report emphasizes the issues in design for storability in terms of product variety and demand volume. The combination of product variety and high demand volume situations can pose considerable problems in the form of handling equipment required for retrieval and order picking. Under these situations, it is imperative to use appropriate tools that would aid proper product design for maximum utilization of storage devices. Chapter two gives a brief review of palletization, and various algorithms researched previously to maximize the utilization of pallets for different types of unit loads. Chapter three provides an insight at the approach taken for the proposed computer based system. In this chapter, the strong links and impacts among the design, packaging, storage and retrieval functions are emphasized through numerical illustrations. The computer based system developed based on this concept would help the user judge the effects of design parameters (unit weight, size, and geometry) on the cost of storage, packaging, and retrieval.
Recommended Citation
Srivatsavan, Srinath, "The effect of product design and packaging parameters on effective storability and retrieval: A computer-based approach." (1999). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 9819.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/9819