Improvements of Warehouse Operations to Reduce the Impact of Quality Deficiencies

In the increasingly competitive market of 3PL:s, it is important to have efficient processes limiting non value adding time as much as possible while at the same time delivering high quality services. There are a number of different quality deficiencies that may occur in the warehouse operations and DB Schenker Logistics AB wants to understand their current situation and how the impact of quality deficiencies can be reduced to make their operations more efficient. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to increase the understanding of quality deficiencies occurring in the warehouse operations and how the operations can be improved to reduce the impact of the deficiencies. Three of Schenker’s larger customers were the focus for the thesis. To be able to fulfil the purpose, five different data collection methods were used which were interviews, observations, time studies, surveys and data from Schenker’s databases. The results from the data collection were the identification and quantification of the time consumption for managing a number of different quality deficiencies. Based on the quantification, suggestions for how to reduce the impact of the deficiencies with the largest impact were presented. The main areas which Schenker can work with and study further are picking errors and their consequences, transportation and the education of new employees.