Over the past few months, I have been working on a DILO operational model. DILO stands for ‘Day In the Life Of’. In warehousing terms, as it suggests, it is a ‘Day in the life of a Warehouse’. We have already covered DILO multiple times in our Fuzzy Friday. After working on it for some time, I have also realised how valuable a tool it is!! A DILO operational model can be used at any stage of a project, from when the warehouse is still in the concept phase to when the warehouse has been built and is ready to go live. As DILO covers each aspect of the warehouse process, it can be used accordingly to get more visibility and control over the warehouse process.
The warehouse processes of today are pretty complex, but at the core, each warehouse follows 7 fundamental functions, starting with Inbound, Receiving, Putaway, Replenishment, Picking, Packing and Despatch. The importance of capturing operational volume at each stage cannot be overstated. Material flow analysis gives us a clear picture of how much volume is moving from one area to another. A material flow analysis is an excellent tool for displaying the daily throughput of the warehouse, however, given that warehouse operations are governed by various external factors, such as order cut-off times for various deliveries, different inbound delivery times, etc., warehouse operations cannot remain the same throughout the day. There will be ups and downs in workload and these ups and downs won’t be visible in material flow analysis. That’s where the DILO comes into the picture.
A DILO operational model can be built for specific time intervals, usually between thirty minutes and one hour. When our DILO model is prepared depending on the time interval and workload profile, it gives us detailed insights into warehouse operations and inefficiencies which could help businesses to improve their operation. There are several ways in which you can use DILO operational model to improve warehouse productivity. In this article, I am going to focus on resource planning.
Labour management
In general, warehouses struggle to maintain a low handling cost per order as they spend more money on resources. Due to frequent changes in workload, managing FTE (Full-time Equivalent) becomes more challenging. DILO gives us answers to all your FTE related questions such as how many FTEs you will require in each area on an hourly basis, what type of MHEs these FTEs will require and how will it be impacted by peak hour? Etc.
DILO operational models can give you insights into how your operational day would look like! These insights will help businesses to take some key decisions. In many cases, warehouses are designed based on the average daily operational volume, and when companies receive a sudden increase in orders, they struggle to fulfill the demand. With the help of the DILO operational model, we can check the same operation for average and peak day volume. It will help companies to plan their peak day with more resources and planning. All these resources are directly corelated to the cost associated with the warehouse. Thus, once we get the daily number of FTEs involved in warehouse operations, we can get information about the cost per handling unit. Some companies prefer to look at the cost per order, cost per line or cost per carton. All this required information can be extracted from the DILO.
Ultimately, the purpose of a DILO analysis is to get all necessary insights about your warehouse operations in order to improve ongoing performance. So, if you are concerned about how productive your warehouse operation is, then contact FLX for your operational DILO analysis.
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