Boost Order Picking Efficiency with these Sequencing Best Practices
This best practice is known as location sequencing. It means that when you are configuring your locations for picking purposes, replenishment, and for put-away purposes in the reserve area in the top level position. While doing this you would have picked the naming convention to streamline the picking.
On top of it there is also the ability to configure something called as the location sequencing. It means that you do not want your pickers to the same location twice which is also known as zig-zagging. Optimizing the picking process will make your picking operators to walk less. Unproductive labor such as unproductive walking due to skipping does not directly translate to picking. The more you pick the more you can ship, the more you ship the more you can invoice and the more you invoice, the more money you make.
It’s important to follow the location sequence as it makes everything optimum. I’ve seen in some WMS where while they are picking from the current location, especially in the path where they’re walking through and then picking something like a batch picking process, they could not only see their current location where they are picking. They could even see the next location where they have to go and based on that they could even skip aisles if there are no picks in that aisle.
There is no point in going through that aisle even though the picker takes that path. It makes it even more efficient if your picks little sporadic and not dense. I mean that’s difficult to control as it’s all based on the order that’s coming. With ABC velocity SKUs you can control it to some extent but it’s not going to be always perfectly controllable. From a put away perspective after building the pallets the receiver can go to the reserve area and can drop-off the every case according to the location sequence. If you have to tweak the location sequence based on the slotting optimization you can also plan accordingly, that would be beneficial.
Put a pedometer on your pickers and then measure one of the distances that they are walking. They are walking all day which means that miles and miles of distance. Looking at that data and then making sure that the location sequence is followed will make the picking process more optimum. Making sure that they are picking faster and minimizing the walk time in doing the picking will help you in making the picking process optimum. This is something that I’ve done in my WMS implementation all the time and that’s a standard practice and that’s the method I was amazed to see in other distribution centers where they didn’t have this and where people are picking by tribal knowledge. They pick every time when they’re looking at the picking location like “this is where I need to go next, I mean in the paper picking process. The locations are listed in sequence and that they follow that sequence.
These processes are not always done and it’s something simple that you could do quickly and get some good gains out of your picking. The gains of efficiency from your picking process is something to think about. Hopefully this is helpful and please let us know your comments in the section below.
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Originally published at Smartgladiator.com on July 23, 2019.
Puga Sankara
Puga Sankara is the co-founder of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at [email protected] or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com.
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