A new product comes into the warehouse. Which pick face do you give it? Let me guess, one which is empty! Is it the most suitable for the number of times you are going to access it or replenish it? You have no idea as you don’t have any history.
A period has passed and you now have some history as to how it is moving. However, can you see it in comparison with all the other products you are picking? Is it an “A” mover or a “B” or a “C”?
If you have a good WMS, it is already identifying what is an “A” mover etc. and telling or suggesting to you what housekeeping moves to make in order to make pick routes and replenishment more efficient. The aim is to pick product efficiently not provide a long distance fitness course for your workers.
Also are you able to spot why sales of some products might be dropping before anyone else notices? Do you have a means of identifying where you are overstocked? Has a fast mover suddenly become a “B” or worse- has it run out of stock? If it has it may not be a surprise it is not selling.
Lots of questions your WMS, if you have a good one, will have either provided the answers to or at least pointed you in the right direction.
So you don’t have these answers to hand and your WMS is not up to providing that functionality. Are you ready for a new WMS? No? But, you would like to make some efficiency in your pick route and better optimise your storage. Do you know which your fastest moving SKUs are, or which SKUs could do with re-profiling?
If you can organise your most accessed SKUs together, or have them in more ergonomic positions to make picking easier and faster you can save time and money. Don’t have space? Then to make the space available you might have to move slower movers elsewhere or even some very slow or non-movers put into “reserve” locations where, if they are needed, you could let them down to pick when the need arises, but which are the best to move?.
We have a couple of tools available.
One is a model which we can use to identify, for you, the correctly sized pick location for each SKU in order to optimise your available cube and manage the frequency of replenishment.
You can contact Graeme Smith at gsmith@lpcinternational.com
Office: + 44 (0) 1285 640038
Mobile: + 44 (0) 7971 884225
The other model, which is available for purchase, provides you with many of the prompts and intelligence above, i.e. which SKUs may need re-profiling, which are not stocked as perhaps they should be and so on. OR we can help you select a new WMS.
You can download the model here
