Mapics Question for Mailing List

I am looking for some advice on ways in which to handle our warehouse configurations.

We currently have our production warehouse configured separately from our spare parts warehouse.  Both are controlled warehouses.   The original thought was that we could segregate inventories in this manner in order to insure that we would have inventory available to insure high levels of immediate shipping performance for spare parts orders.

We are considering combining these two warehouses into one in order to eliminate some of the administrivia that occurs as a result of having to transfer items to/from the separate warehouses and to ease the shipping process for spare parts orders.  We are considering using safety stock levels to retain high spare parts shipping performance or will use planning BOMs to plan for service items.  Under this one warehouse scenario we would have one location designating a spare parts location; possibly "parts".  Although the current spare parts warehouse is controlled, recent discussions resulted in an agreement that one location per item is sufficient.

Presently, the Materials Department uses one common stocking location (9999) in our parts warehouse to temporarily store all items that are transferred in from any production warehouse locations.   Individuals in the spare parts department are supposed to transfer these items from location 9999 to the location where the item actually gets stocked in the spares warehouse (this isn't a totally reliable process). 

When the COM shipment occurs for the parts order, there may be inventory available in 9999 and/or the real stocking location and the operator in our Service Department basically picks the location that happens to suit their fancy at the moment, or will choose the location that happens to have a positive on-hand balance at the time (yea...I know...).

I am curious to learn what some of your perspectives are regarding the pros & cons of operating in a single warehouse environment versus a multiple warehouse environment for the production and spare parts inventories. Thanks in advance!

Dale Walker, VP MIS
Gross-Given Mfg. Co. / Automatic Products Intn'l
http://www.automaticproducts.com

voice        651-290-4349
fax          651-224-5559
cellular   651-270-4150