Date of Award

12-2022

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Industrial and Entrepreneurial Engineering and Engineering Management

First Advisor

Azim Houshyar, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Bruna Mota, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Sime Curkovic, Ph.D.

Keywords

ABC-XYZ analysis, continuous review policy, plan for every part, safety stock, warehouse design

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The work focused on the inventory management of Dimplex Thermal Solutions, which had a profoundly overstocked warehouse and was suffering from significant operating expenses, due to the absence of a grounded ordering policy and the need to rent external storage space, respectively.

The main objective of the thesis was to solve the primarily mentioned problems, by constructing a Plan For Every Part (PFEP) tool, followed by the application of an inventory policy and the proposal of a redesigned warehouse layout, to compute ideal stock values and calculate the footprint requirements for Dimplex’s updated inventory levels, respectively. The execution step concerned a root cause analysis that contextualized the main problems at Dimplex, followed by a detailed data gathering of the company’s key information before the application of the above-mentioned methodologies.

Results-wise, the conception of a reorder model verified the company could decrease the value of its average held inventory by roughly 29%, and also enabled the creation of a decision support tool for the buying department, which dictated the ordering process on a daily basis, and helped the company to save approximately 800.000 USD. Furthermore, the application of a layout model demonstrated that the company could hold most of its inventory within its own warehouse and reduce the footprint usage in external storage by approximately 73%.

Download

Share

COinS