Gestão e melhoria de processos logísticos

: projeto no centro logístico da Parfois

Abstract

More than providing a sustainable growth in firms, the improvement of processes must be a frequent thought, not only for top managers, but for everyone, everywhere, in every organization. To keep up with its outstanding growth in the last few years, Parfois has been constantly rethinking its distribution center in Rio Tinto, Portugal. As part of this, the project that is being now presented had, as its primary objective, to concede a major improvement to the process of consumables dispatching to the stores. With more than 400 stores throughout the globe, it was essential to improve costumer service levels in this warehouse. We started by analyzing the initial situation, identifying different process weaknesses that needed immediate intervention. The total disorganization and clutter of the warehouse, the impracticality of the product hierarchy, the absence of defined product locations, the need for manual invoicing, or the usage of the e-mail service to fulfill the orders, all contributed for a slow and inefficient process. To overcome all this waste, we started to reorganize the warehouse in order to achieve stream improvements in the operation, as well as conceding a better product organization. This first step was essential to put into practice a new picking method, to give the best answer to the implementation of the logistics component of an online portal, from where the stores would place their orders. The results of this project were clear. Beyond the clearly positive evolution in terms of product placement in the warehouse, the average order and picking lead-times were greatly reduced, while facing an increasing level of output, without compromising customer service levels. Process simplification was achieved and the workers revealed themselves pleased with these changes. The lean tools contributed in a large scale to the well succeeded implementation of these improvements in this warehouse, where, nowadays, the searching for waste reduction has become a main objective.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rita Ribeiro (Supervisor)