In recent years the increase in time-based competition and the growth of e-commerce have put pressure on logistics managers to reduce the cost of DC design and management activities. This importance and interest in DC system design is justified by the behavior of strongly changing global and extended markets which require companies to process and manage increasingly differentiated products with shorter life cycles, low volumes and ever shorter customer delivery times.
Nevertheless, companies attempt to achieve high volume production and distribution using minimal inventories throughout the logistic supply chain in accordance with shorter response time.
Now, with a decade of growth in e-commerce, and the strength of its development, there is a renewed focus on DC activities and facilities, in particular on the management of order picking systems which are being required to process a far higher volume of smaller orders resulting in escalating picking costs.
In most DCs, the typical manual discrete order picking process is to travel through the facility and build an order. This picking method is referred to as “Picker-to-Product”. In a full case batch order picking system, pickers may have to cycle through the entire pick module for each batch of orders. As orders and batches become smaller these methods become less efficient.
However, retailers and some wholesalers are good candidates for the adoption of an alternative “Product-to-Picker” (or more simply “put”) order fulfillment configuration since in these operations many of the same SKUs are being ordered across a majority of the stores/customers.
In a typical “put” system containers of individual SKUs are delivered to an order fulfillment zone where an operator is stationed. Each zone is equipped to serve several different store/customer orders. Instead of picking SKUs while moving pass them, SKUs are allocated (put) to the orders that require them. The operator “puts” the required quantity of the product into customer specific, bar coded, shipping cartons that will (when full or completed) go to the retail store, industrial user or consumer. RF scanning, Put-to-Light, and Voice Directed technologies, or some Multi-Modal combination thereof, can be used to direct the operator and to insure inventory and order fulfillment accuracy.
Delivery schedules may range from daily, to every other day, or whatever is required for that particular store/customer.
Key industries ideal for Product-to-Picker systems include:
- Retail/Wholesale
- Pharmaceutical
- Apparel & Accessories
- Music, Book & Media Publishing/Distribution
- Electronics
- Cosmetics & Beauty Products
- Vitamins
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