Order picking in e-commerce – optimization of the flow of goods by using a dashboard

Initial Situation: Competec Logistik AG is expanding its warehouse to reach the necessary capacity. The existing infrastructure is at its limit. It is challenging to maintain the customer promise «ordered today, delivered tomorrow». Appropriate instruments for monitoring and steering the picking-process are not available at the company until today. Goals: The purpose of the thesis is to develop a dashboard that helps to control the overall system. The thesis defines the right KPIs which should be integrated in the dashboard and its visualisation by creating a mockup. Procedure: In the first part a status quo analysis of the company was carried out. In addition, a benchmark analysis was carried out with other e-commerce logistics providers. Afterwards, the concept was developed with the information out of the status quo analysis and the benchmark analysis. Conclusion: The analysis showed that fluctuations of the order backlog within the system exists. To steer the system more efficiently a dashboard is recommended. The dashboard mockup was created with grafana. The dashboard shows the order backlog, the current picking performance, the stock level in the buffer, customer frequency and further KPIs. The KPIs are updated every five minutes. With this information it is possible to react faster and more accurately to changes and enables the identifications of bottlenecks at an early stage.

Studienbetreuer: Fabio Mercandetti