There are two ways to enter the Simio Student Case Competition. You can either enter directly or through class participation. This contest, we had 15 teams enter directly (29 students) and 39 instructors with 318 teams (1417 students) for a total of 333 teams (1446 students).
We also had representation from the following 17 countries:
The 1446 students came from these 49 schools:
The Miebach Distribution Center (MDC) is a warehouse that stores footwear and apparel items which are shipped as outgoing orders to customers. These orders range from “singles” which are single consumer purchases to multi-item orders. MDC is noticing an increase in orders as well as a diversification of order types. Warehouse planners and mangers are looking to improve picking operation strategy to meet their customer delivery goals. The planners and managers must determine how to balance the workload across the warehouse system, which includes taking into consideration the teams that work downstream of picking. The scope of this project starts with picking units from shelved storage and ends with packing and shipping the orders.
Due to the uptick of orders, the MDC is transitioning into wave picking management methodology or “waving” to collect the units from their storage locations. To wave the MDC warehouse, orders are grouped together, and the grouped orders’ units are split up by their corresponding warehouse zone storage location. The zone is picked by the workers and the units collected are moved to a staging area. Once all units from a wave reach the staging area, the wave is sent to packing and shipping. The wave is organized back into orders and shipped out.
The MDC is searching for recommendations for the best waving and picking strategy for managing their warehouse which optimizes labor utilization and minimizes missed customer delivery goals. The wave picking strategy should include the ideal size of a wave based on order attributes, unit locations, and acceptable picking receptacle. The criteria that places orders in the same wave should also be investigated. Additionally, the MDC would like to identify any warehouse re-zoning that would benefit the waving processes. The MDC is hoping for a set of rules that helps future formulation of waves.
The judging was based on:
For more detail, see the Contest Judging Criteria.
Felix Vicknair Director at Miebach (USA) |
Jackie Niemeyer Consultant at Miebach (USA) |
Jason Jackson Manager at Miebach (USA) |
Mustafa Gocken Assistant Professor at Adana Science and Technology University (Turkey) |
Katy Smith Management Engineer III at Emory Healthcare (USA) |
Dusan Sormaz Professor at Ohio University (USA) |
Stephanie Yeap Operations Research Analyst at Eastman Chemical Company (USA) |
Dr. B. Kris Jaeger-Helton Director for Design in Engineering Education Division at Northeastern University (USA) |
Iurii Sas Operations Research Manager at Eastman Chemical Company (USA) |
Iván Gonzalo Vilaboa Adjunct Professor at ITBA (Argentina) |
Moolman van Aarde Head of Simulation at Process Design and Automation (South Africa) |
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Mardoqueo Velasquez Faculty and Researcher at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (Guatemala) |
Cassidy P. Shaffer Advanced Operations Research Analyst at Eastman Chemical Company (USA) |
David Sturrock Vice President of Products |
Elizabeth Millar Applications Engineer |
Adam Sneath Applications Engineer |
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Caleb Whitehead Applications Engineer |
Paul Glasser Delivery Manager |
Ryan Welch Luttrell Product Engineer |