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Kaiser Foundation Hospitals

Gerry Perham

Boris Klots

Peter Ham

William H Waddington

Gautam Bhargava

Patricia C Grewell

Franklin R Koenig

Radhakrishna Hari

Susan L Griese

A load balancing technology segregates various inventory types (e.g., potatoes vs. milk, vs. pretzels, vs. tissue paper, etc.) based upon how frequently they are ordered in a distribution center. Inventory types that are ordered at the slowest rate are not 'replicated' over multiple pods in the distribution center. Rather, they are constrained to reside at a single pod within the distribution center. Items that are ordered somewhat more frequently than those in the slowest group are replicated in multiple pods across the distribution center. In other words, these items are separately stocked at locations on more than one pod in the distribution center. This means that a container passing through the distribution center can obtain each of the items in the second group of item types at multiple pods in the distribution center. Thus, these items do not create a bottleneck in the order fulfillment process. Inventory types in a third group, the fastest movers, are segregated from items in the first two groups. They are stored in a separate type of pod that fulfills orders even faster than the other type of pods.

Inventory replication based upon order fulfillment rates

A warehouse management system that maximizes throughput and reduces carrying costs by reducing the number of stops that a container makes in the process of fulfilling a customer order. This is accomplished by allocating inventory to orders using the following series of considerations. First, the system selects a pod in order to maximize throughput. If there are multiple locations within the pod that stock the same inventory item, then the method chooses one of those locations based upon the expiration date. Finally, if multiple of these locations have units that expire within the same expiration period, the location with the fewest units is chosen.

Order allocation to select from inventory locations stocking few units of inventory

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Gerry Perham