The operation of reception has an impact on pro- ductivity and on the clients satisfaction, hence the necessity of making it work well. Objective.To intro- duce the state of the art and develop a proposal to implement a discrete simulation model and an ex- perimental design, in order to improve the reception operation in the management of the storage of a finished product, including a case of operation in a mid size mattress factory from Medellin. Materials and Methods. A methodology focus is designed for the use of the discrete simulation and the experimen- tal design in the reception operation, contributing to the state of the art. Results.The capability of the methodology and of the application case to improve the reception operation was identified and verified, because the media time required was reduced from 30 to 5 minutesand the efficiency in the modeling improved, due to the fact that the experimental mo- del allowed a focus on the factors that affected the variable of interest.