Warehouse Management Using V‐A‐T Logical Structure Analysis

The management of a warehouse facility has often been viewed as a problem in facility layout, inventory management, or logistics. Seldom has the management of a warehouse been viewed as a process of succeeding operations that can be analyzed as a unique operating production system. Yet, warehouses are process oriented and can show significant improvements in productivity by applying methods usually used in production environments. One such method if called V‐A‐T analysis. This method examines the process, determines the logical structure of the process and defines critical control points for management to use to improve the overall process performance. This article describes the V‐A‐T analysis and applies the method to three different types of warehouse facilities.