Warehouse System Configuration Support through Models

The warehouse system sales process leads from a specific customer request to a specific customer quotation. This process of configuring a warehouse system with existing components involves a sequence of steps which contain increasingly more details. In this chapter, it is shown by two examples that easy-to-use essential system simulation models can be applied early in the sales process with a good cost/benefit ratio. Configuration of the models and their analyses require little effort, while their results are comparable to detailed simulations. Next to these examples of specific models, an overall sales process improvement is proposed by consolidating the available knowledge in models through a framework. The basic concept for this evolvable framework is to provide traceability of customer data and results throughout the sales process.