A case study in efficient space usage and product tracking in the wine industry

Alta Vista, a winery in Mendoza, Argentina, that produces roughly two million bottles of wine annually, completed construction of a secondary production and storage facility in the spring of 2008. One purpose of this facility is to store bottles of wine prior to labeling and shipping. Since the construction of the new building, Alta Vista has not established procedures for fully utilizing the storage space or tracking bottled wine in the facility. This lack of procedures has led to wine being stored inefficiently, and does not allow management to quickly locate specific batches of wine or check their exact inventory levels. This project focuses on establishing an inventory layout and tracking system for the wine storage area and a procedure for maintaining it. Two sets of recommendations were proposed to Alta Vista. The first concerns overall space layout and the second is a procedure for maintaining the layout and tracking specific batches. After establishing the storage requirements of the client and assessing the current inventory storage situation, the team utilized computer aided design to develop layout alternatives that were evaluated with performance metrics. The resulting designs will be improved by the establishment of tracking and maintenance procedures to sustain the organizational layout. When compared to the current arrangement, the final recommended layout increases the total capacity of wine storage by 63,000 750 ml bottles, increases the number of storage sectors from 42 to 65, maintains the number of sector sizes at 5, reduces the average distance from bottling by nearly 3 meters and to labeling by over 5 meters, and allows for the full use of the side doors which are currently blocked from use. The layout also facilitates the implementation of a tracking system for the different batches and lines of wine, which will allow the managers to quickly locate individual batches. The proposed layout improves space utilization, increases direct access to all batches, and allows Alta Vista to track wine throughout the storage facility.