Optimal Team Formation and Job Assignment to Optimize Warehouse Operations.

We study optimal container unloading and warehouse replenishment at a manufacturing plant. The warehouse inventory is depleted as parts are consumed in the manufacturing process. The inventory level is replenished using the parts stored in sea-containers and trailers available at the plant. Our goal is to determine the optimal team formation, buffer allocation, and job assignment for teams of workers. The teams work at two tandem stations, each with several finite-buffered parallel queues. The objective is to minimize the total time required to process all containers and trailers. There are operational constraints on the number of teams that can be formed, the number of servers in each team, and the number of buffer spaces allotted to each team. We use a simulation-based optimization approach, and the results consistently show a reduction in the processing time. Further, we also observe that the optimal team formation is dependent on the total workload.