SERVICE QUALITY IMPROVEMENT ON WAREHOUSE-STORE TRANSPORTATION IN A RETAIL FOOD COMPANY

This project was developed in a food retail company with a complex distribution system, with several distribution centres located in Portugal, different temperature requirements for their products and different dimension store formats. The aim of the work was to analyze procedures to increase the service quality to the warehouse and stores through the improvement of the volumetric occupancy rate of the trucks, which depends mainly on the relationship between the number of pallets transported in each vehicle and its volume. After analyzing and diagnosing the picking, loading and unloading operations, it was found that the volumetric occupancy rate of the vehicles was 48.5%, which means that more than half of the truck is empty. To increase this indicator, two strategies were proposed to be implemented: the revision of the current volume and weight limits; and the consolidation of different product categories in the same pallet for the small-format stores. After conducting pilot tests, a potential gain was obtained of more than 577,908 €/year.