Logistics News: Sorting Completed Picks for the Smaller DC
Operation

Whenever it takes more than one trip into the warehouse to pick a customer’s order, the question arises of how best to get all of the components together for shipment. 

Most small order fulfillment operations, for our purpose defined as shipping 10,000 or less cases per day, pay employees to do all the work, manually locating and bringing together the picks from different zones so they can be consolidated, packed, weighed, labeled and shipped. 

But, as the number of products, customer orders, and shipping volume grows, the amount of non-productive walking time becomes more of a factor.  At that point, it becomes more efficient (competitive) to mechanize, utilizing a basic conveyor sortation system that takes the products from the pickers and transports them through a sorting operation to shipping for order consolidation.

The primary benefit of a conveyor sortation system is, of course, the labor saved by eliminating both the need to make repeated stops at the same pick location, manually transport completed picks to the shipping docks, and to individually consolidate the components of each order. 

In addition, sorters provide an opportunity to scan the product as it is shipped, verifying its identity and making sure that the right product is going to the right customers. The automated scanning of barcoded products can also, in some situations, eliminate the need for scanning or data entry by the pickers, making their jobs easier and making them more efficient and more accurate. This is true for both full-case and item-picking operations. The only difference is the type of sortation and scanning equipment required.

However, if the cases picked and shipped by a company per shift are less than 10,000, automatic sorting often cannot be cost justified.

Smaller operations, however, should not abandon the possibility of reducing labor costs adding mechanization. I believe a scaled down, but still effective use of automation can serve many of these companies very well, as I have seen first hand over my career.

The approach? Consider deployment of a manual sorting system utilizing a simple re-circulating conveyor loop connected via conveyors to picking areas (as illustrated below). 

Manual Mechanized Sortation System

In this approach, order pickers use batch picking techniques, which are at the heart of the labor savings delivered by traditional sortation systems. As a wave or batch of orders is released to the floor, picks per location are consolidated, meaning a picker visits that location just once, and picks cartons across orders for that wave.

As the cartons are picked, they are placed on a conveyor for delivery to the sortation loop. As a result, this approach can significantly reduce travel time, always the largest element of picking costs, in full-case picking operations

The picked cartons are conveyed to the sorting area. There, however, the company doesn’t deploy a traditional (and expensive) high-speed automoted sorter. Instead, a simple circulating conveyor loop is used. A team of workers (number depending on case volume) remove cases from the conveyor loop and place them on the appropriate pallet as indicated on the customer ID label, applied in picking.

What is it Going to Cost?

Conveyors and sortation equipment can be expensive.  This approach, however, could be deployed for a cost somewhere in the range of $250,000 to $350,000.

While that’s not a trivial expense, it is one that many, many companies can afford and to cost justify. Depending on several factors, the investment can easily pay for itself from the labor saved and the order filling speed gained.

In addition, small operations can generally get along just fine without the additional cost of sophisticated control and software systems.  The annual labor saved from reducing the headcount equivalent by 4 to 6 full-time employees will go a long way to providing a 30-36 month payback.  And, the built-in additional shipping capacity will allow for volume growth without an incremental labor increase.

At some point of continued growth, the manual sortation system could be converted to a more automated solution – a transition that should be comparatively easy with the automated batch-picking methodology already in place.

Though this low-tech approach to sortation for smaller companies has been around for many years and adopted by some companies, it is not widely deployed for a simple reason – few companies are aware of it.

Large materials handling system manufacturers and integrators are generally not much interested in such smaller systems, especially if the company they are working with doesn’t ask about it.

Still, there are many materials handling system providers that would be pleased to implement such an approach – just ask.

If your small order fulfillment operation has grown in size to where you are ready to consider alternatives, you can be sure that there is an affordable conveyor sorting system configuration available that will keep your operation efficiently humming along.

For more details on sorting and picking methods and technology, see SCDigest Letter Resource Pages on Sortation Systems for Distribution and Advanced Order Picking Systems.

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