Demonstrating Warehousing Concepts Through Interactive Animations

Abstract

In this paper, we report development of interactive computer animations to demonstrate warehousing concepts, providing a virtual environment for learning. Almost every company, regardless of its industry, holds inventory of goods in its warehouse(s) to respond to customer demand promptly, to coordinate supply and demand, to realize economies of scale in manufacturing or processing, to add value to its products and to reduce response time. Design, analysis, and improvement of warehouse operations can yield significant savings for a company. Warehousing science can be considered as an important field within the industrial engineering discipline. However, there is very little educational material (including web based media), and only a handful of books available in this field. We believe that the animations that we developed will significantly contribute to the understanding of warehousing concepts, and enable tomorrow’s practitioners to grasp the fundamentals of managing warehouses.