Regular order allocation and order picking

In the whole warehouse the traditional picker-to-goods method of picking is used. In the end of 2013 in Wotilau there was only manual paper picking in the FMCG area and voice picking system in the fashion area. And the project of automation for the FMCG area was under consideration. The categories of products which are picked by the voice picking option are all ABCD types of products.

The paper picking is implemented to the all types of products as well. The order process in a warehouse is done with the use of the manual paper picking method that have been de-scribed previously in the literature.

For the ease of the naming, the company has divided its warehouse logistics customers to two groups. They are single customers (physical bodies) and corporate customers (corporate entities). The single customers are simply called byers or receives, and this extends to all company’s customers of all business groups. The corporate customers in the warehouse lo-gistics domain are called simply customers.

Orders are received electronically and directly to the company’s own WMS. The orders come from both company’s customers and byers. The buyers are not users of the warehouse but they create orders to the company’s WMS system when purchasing items in Internet on the websites of company’s corporate clients. The orders are coming in two ways:

a) A person makes a purchase in an Internet shop by selecting items. A firm which owns the Internet shop is a customer of the Case Company’s warehouse services. The cus-tomer’s order from the Internet shop is transferred to the Case Company WMS system with the use of the WMS web client. The WMS web client plays a role of the engine for direct order communication between Internet shops and the Company’s warehouses.

b) A company’s buyer accesses its local ERP system in an office and creates a customer’s order by inputting items to pick up from a warehouse. The orders are then transferred to

the Case Company’s WMS via Company’s EDI system which is integrated both to the Case Company IT system and to the customers’ systems.

The order allocation process

The following steps are completed in the following way: all orders that are created both in the Internet and locally by customers’ in offices are further allocated via the Case Company’s WMS system to a particular warehouse of the Case Company where the relevant goods are stored. The basic process of order receiving to dispatch is shown on the Figure 16.

Figure 16 Warehouse process map of order picking.

The employees’ level

Inside the warehouse there is a computer with a screen in the each warehouses’ area. Ware-house managers have access to the orders via the WMS program interface which is accessed on the warehouse computers. When an order is received in the WMS, a responsible manager assigns an employee for picking and dispatching process. An order is scanned manually and picked with the use of a forklift. The manual work of a picker is to print and receive a paper order from the WMS system and put manually the order procedure back. The orders are picked in accordance with the pick by order strategy, i.e. names of items in all orders and their location are printed at a one separate list and picked one by one according to their location. At the stage of a dispatch the items are allocated in accordance with its orders.

The basic order setup in the warehouse is done with four work locations: carton picking location, full pallet picking location, small item picking location, and dispatch location. Each order is divided to locations, depending on ordered items. Order picking realization is pre-sented on the Figure 17. In this example, order is divided to all locations, meaning it has carton picking, small item picking and full pallet picking. All locations can be picked and

confirmed separately, not depending on speed/work load in other locations. Goods are con-solidated in dispatch area, if needed.

Process of realization of orders

WarehouseWMS

Order for sales Release for picking Identifying picking location

Picking confirmation Location of

dispatch Goods are sent

Data recorded

Start

Figure 17 Order picking realization The system level

On the first step when orders are created they are allocated in the WMS system on the prod-uct-level, i.e. on the level of available physical items in the stock. Available product-level balance is determined from the WMS record of the stock level allocation. Allocated quantity of products in order is added to the WMS record.

On the second step, when an order is released to picking, it is allocated on the bin-level, it is a level of available materials in a cartoon in which they are stored in the warehouse. Then, available bin-level balance is determined from the WMS and allocated order quantity is rec-orded into the WMS. After that in the WMS system a pending order transactions are created.

These records show which bin and batch will be used when the order is picked.

On the third step, when the order is dispatched, the allocated quantities will be deducted from the product-level balance in the WMS and bin-level balance according to the ware-house transaction records. Then the wareware-house transaction records come from the pending to the actual status and a stock transaction record is created to show that the balance of the product has changed.

As the case study and description of the main process of the Case Company has been pre-sented, the following paragraph focuses on the experimental part of the case study in order to answer to the research question, so it is necessary to provide the implementation of RFID technology into warehouse process, and analyze and interpret the obtained data.