How Pallet Storage, Picking, and Slotting Optimization Can Unlock Capacity, Reduce Cost, and Improve Warehouse Performance

The Wisdom for Warehousing course includes Dr. Frazelle's lecture video at Georgia Tech, a fully edited and illustrated course, richly illustrated course slides, an excerpt from his World Class Warehousing book, video tours of the some of the world's best warehouse operations, and an assessment tool to compare your operations with best practices.

Honda’s warehouses were operating above 98% capacity, preventing the implementation of a new warehouse management system. By moving excess inventory to an off-site warehouse and reducing utilization to 85%, the company uncovered a large amount of unnecessary safety stock created by poor forecasting. This visibility drove major improvements to its forecasting process, inventory planning, and overall warehouse efficiency.

Designed using Dr. Frazelle’s World-Class Warehousing principles, the award-winning ACS Logistics Center combines AI-based slotting, packing optimization, ergonomics, automated cubing, ASRS, intelligent packing, and sorting. The design enabled ACS to consolidate its nationwide distribution network, improve warehouse efficiency, and redirect millions of dollars toward cancer research.

Zone picking can reduce travel, minimize congestion, strengthen product-location familiarity, and increase operator accountability. Examples from Xerox and True Value show how dedicated zones can improve productivity and accuracy—and even reveal slotting opportunities. However, these benefits must be weighed against added costs and control complexity through optimization and simulation before selecting the best picking design.