Wave failure analysis

Ship the SQL DC managers check every morning

A warehouse operations star schema: 5 zones (GOLDEN/STANDARD/BULK/COLD/HAZMAT), 20 workers, 40 SKUs, 80 inbound receipts, 500 pick tasks, 120 inventory positions, 90 cycle counts. Planted data-quality issues: NIGHT shift UPLH is 18% below DAY; OVERFLOW zone pick error rate 4× GOLDEN; dock door 3 has 2× average dock-to-stock time; 12 A-class SKUs currently in BULK zone (slotting mismatch).

Units per labor hour, dock-to-stock decomposition, pick accuracy by zone, slotting recommendations, and wave analysis — the full warehouse operations analyst SQL curriculum across 30 missions.

Compute units per labor hour across picking zones and shifts — the metric DC managers review every morning.

UPLH by Zone and Shift

Break the inbound cycle into unload, count, and putaway phases to find the bottleneck causing SLA breaches.

Dock-to-Stock Decomposition

Rank zones by pick error rate — surface the OVERFLOW zone pattern where error rates are 4× higher than GOLDEN.

Pick Accuracy Heat Map

Cross ABC velocity analysis with current zone assignments to identify misslotted A-class SKUs wasting travel time.

Slotting Recommendation

Pick rates, dock-to-stock, and slotting.

Zone count

Worker roster

Inbound receipt count

Inventory snapshot top 10

Dock-to-stock average

SKUs by velocity class

UPLH by zone

Top SKUs by pick frequency

Inbound by day of week

Cycle count variance by zone

Pick accuracy

Pick rate by zone and shift

Dock-to-stock 3-phase

Workers vs median LPH

Wave completion time

Accuracy root cause

SLA breaches

Labor by function

Slotting mismatch

Shift handoff analysis

UPLH normalized for travel

Cycle count $$$ triage

Percentile distribution

Zone utilization

Slotting recommendation

Tenure cohort productivity

Perfect inbound rate

Operations scorecard

DC capstone

zone_id

zone_name

velocity_target

pick_travel_multiplier

dim_zones

worker_id

worker_name

hire_date

role

shift_preference

dim_workers

sku_id

sku_code

sku_name

velocity_class

current_zone_id

dim_skus

receipt_id

supplier_id

dock_door

dock_arrival_ts

unload_complete_ts

count_complete_ts

putaway_complete_ts

expected_units

actual_units

fact_inbound_receipts

task_id

order_id

wave_id

shift

pick_start_ts

pick_end_ts

qty_requested

qty_picked

pick_error_flag

fact_pick_tasks

position_id

snapshot_date

qty_on_hand

qty_allocated

qty_available

fact_inventory_positions

count_id

count_date

system_qty

counted_qty

variance_pct

fact_cycle_counts

Wave failure analysis

The Brief

You'll practice