Case Study Warehouse Management Issues at ABC Electronics . Henry Bergson, the inventory manager at ABC Electronics' main distribution center at a large industrial park in Chicago, Illinois, had become aware of a growing problem with the storage and picking of the company's best-selling product, the 32-inch LCD flat Screen TV. Over the past six months, beginning with a popular promotion, sales had quadrupled and the product had been flowing into receiving in large lot sizes staged on pallets that were unloaded from the manufacturer's truck. Because of the quantities, purchasing had negotiated an extremely favorable contract and was now buying almost two month's worth of sales at a time. When it is considered that the increases in storage requirements are also occurring for other products, Henry has begun to worry about how much more capacity the warehouse will need. Currently, the product had been located in the warehouse's shelf rack area. The product had been assigned a full shelf for storage. Put- away consisted in unloading the pallets in the receiving area. Stock personnel then loaded the product on their put-away vehicles and proceeded to the stocking location where they were unloaded Problems had arisen on two fronts. The first, and most serious, had to do with order pickingBecause of its popularity , orders (constituting about 40 percent of total orders) frequently came in from retailers in large lot sizes. Because of the order size, pickers often found that there was insufficient stock at the location to fill an entire order completely . What was picked had to be staged in a waiting area until more of the product could be found. Often when customer order pickers went to the location it was empty! These half complete and rejected orders were then returned to the picking manager . Since the computer showed a very large on- hand balance, the manager then turned the orders over to stocking personnel to locate and fill. The second problem involved put-away . It seems that the delivery was in such a large quantity that only 20 percent of the receipt could be put away in the assigned location . The balance of the receipt had to be located in randomly assigned overflow locations . To make things worse , there was no real system to record where this overflow stock was Stock personnel often had to wander the warehouse looking for the product . Often promised shipping dates had been missed as valuable time was spent looking for product . In addition , TVs in ABC^ prime s inventory were lot controlled . It was management policy that the oldest lot be shipped out first to avoid obsolescence . This policy was often violated as stock personnel simply picked the first lot they found for shipment . How would you help Henry solve this stocking and filling problem ? What types of actions are possible to solve the order and put - away problems ?