These materials are provided by the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology. You are welcome to use them so long as the copyrights remain intact, credit for authorship is acknowledged, and nothing is resold at profit.

Software for warehouse design and analysis

Optimization software

To slot a forward pick area

It is not sufficient to store the fastest-moving SKUs forward because this does not account for the cost of restocking. This software determines which SKUs to store forward, in what amounts, and where, to minimize total labor (picking plus restocking).

To optimize pick-paths

Describe the layout of a warehouse and provide an order stream. Then this software computes the minimum travel distance pick-path. It also highlights, on a map of the warehouse, all the locations to be visited for each customer order.

Visualization software

To draw a “heat map” highlighting busy areas of the warehouse

Use a spreadsheet to draw the layout of a warehouse; then this software will shade the storage locations according to frequency of visit by order-pickers or volume of product picked or any other statistic associated with storage locations.

To identify SKU affinities

This software will search through a history of customer orders to identify those SKUs that are frequently ordered together or that tend to form complete orders.

Using the programs

The programs are written entirely in Java and so run on any machine and any operating system. However, you must have the latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your machine. Java is freely available here.
The programs are provided as services over the internet and so you always have the latest version, and with no need to install anything. Your data stays on your machine. The computational engines come to you (if your firewall settings permit).
You may use these programs for free; but please note that the user assumes all responsibility. See the accompanying license.
The ideas underlying each program are explained in the textbook Warehouse & Distribution Science.