Trommer & Associates, Inc. uses the latest Economic Based Slotting software to optimize inventory placement within your warehouse and drive down your day-to-day operating expense. This technology is just one of the many tools Trommer & Associates uses to provide our clients with exceptional service.

Slotting Overview
Slotting places your inventory in the optimal location in your facility for stocking and picking of your forward pick inventory. Proper placement of a part within your system can increase picking efficiency and cube utilization while reducing total operating costs.

Traditional slotting programs look at the cube and velocity of a part to place it in the best pick location in the warehouse. While this generally gives an adequate result for picking, it may not be the lowest operating cost scenario. An Economic Based Slotting program incorporates replenishment costs, storage costs, product placement (ergonomics), and inventory levels into its algorithm. Each of these elements affects the total operations cost in a facility and must be taken into account when trying to determine the least cost scenario.

A proper Economic Based Slotting exercise is computer generated using slotting software that incorporates known project data coupled with a client's knowledge of their business. Computerized slotting allows Trommer & Associates to take their facility planning services to a higher level.

Slotting Benefits
The benefits of Economic Based Slotting of your inventory are numerous. Some of the benefits include the following:

•  Slotting an existing layout establishes a baseline which is used to evaluate the effectiveness of different slotting alternatives.
• Slotting can be used to determine the size of a facility. It also validates the storage media type and quantity within the facility.
• Slotting can be used to forecast Operating Costs for different levels of business.
• Slotting can be used to answer questions about a proposed layout change. This allows us to predict the benefits of a new layout prior to our clients making a large capital investment.
• Slotting provides a "dynamic" solution by providing an optimal shelving configuration layout. Other slotting methods require the user to select the shelving configuration through "trial and error".
• Slotting can provide a graphical representation of a proposed system. Instead of looking at a computer listing, you can actually see the anticipated activity. This not only provides an understanding of how a layout will work, it provides visual cues to potential problems that can be addressed prior to implementation, such as bottlenecks.
• Slotting can quickly analyze data for a number of alternative layouts to minimize operating costs. This allows you more hands-on time to manage the warehouse operation and less time in front of the computer juggling spreadsheets.

The preceding are just a few of the benefits of using our Economic Based Slotting package. All Distributions Systems will benefit from some level of slotting, but the best solutions are those that reduce your operating cost at all levels.