A poorly-run warehouse suffers organizational and customer service problems. An SAP Mobile Inventory Solution can help distribution centers of all sizes improve processes, accuracy, and productivity, especially when it comes to warehouse order picking.
Picking is selecting the right materials and quantities in a warehouse to complete a customer's order. Customers could be external clients buying finished products or internal customers, such as maintenance staff, ordering spare parts.
As picking is the most labor-intensive warehouse activity, typically occupying more than half of all staff, it forms a large percentage of warehouse costs. Picking is also the primary interface between the warehouse and the customer. It can have a big impact on their operations if the customer receives the wrong product or picking is delayed.
An efficient picking operation depends on several components working effectively together: people, process, warehouse layout, equipment, data, and technology. Let’s take a quick look at each of these areas.
People and Process
While robot picking is now a reality, most warehouse operations are still dependent on people to pick orders. With current labor shortages and high staff turnover, the onus should be on keeping the picking process as simple as possible. New staff members need to quickly acquire product knowledge, with modern warehouses often containing thousands of Stock Keeping Units (SKUs).
Expect initial productivity to be lower until the staff completes training. Picking instructions should be clear and simple, only providing the user with the information they need to do the job, e.g., product description, quantity and bin location.
Warehouse Layout and Equipment
Fundamental warehouse design seeks to minimize the movement of staff – travel time is wasted time. For picking, this includes locating fast-moving products in the most accessible parts of the warehouse, e.g., ground floor bins, closest to the dispatch bay.
The product pick sequence should follow the logical warehouse layout to avoid the picker having to backtrack, which adds time. Avoid locating similar products next to each other which often leads to picking errors. Providing the right equipment for the job is also critical. If you’re picking full pallets, a forklift truck will be ideal, but it’s not the best tool for case picking because of the time to mount and dismount (a powered order picker will be more suitable).
Data
Maybe data isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about an efficient picking operation, but it’s hard to find a warehouse operation today that doesn’t suffer from data challenges. Warehouse data relating to products, suppliers, customers and warehouse bins must be accurate. If this data is incorrect, warehouse operations will slow down, including the critical picking operation.
One of the biggest challenges for many warehouse operations is SKU proliferation, including new products, pack sizes and promotions. The old product must be exhausted before picking new stock, which adds complexity to picking operations.
Technology
Given the importance of picking in serving customers with the right product in the right quantity and at the right time, it’s surprising how many businesses still operate using paper pick sheets.
Customer orders are captured in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system – like SAP – pick sheets are printed, the warehouse staff picks products, they write quantities picked and additional information on the sheet, and then the sheet goes to the back office for confirmation in the ERP.
In many industry verticals – e.g., oil and gas, mining, and utilities – it’s still common to find warehouse processes, including picking, being operated without any barcodes and scanning.
Paper-based picking operations are time-consuming, which negatively impacts warehouse productivity. Moreover, they’re more prone to error, increasing the possibility of the customer receiving the wrong product or quantity.
Picking is an area ripe for technology intervention, whatever a warehouse's size or level of operational complexity. For a Maintenance, Repairs and Operations (MRO) warehouse supplying spare parts to technicians in a factory or the field, then a positive first step will be to deploy barcodes in the warehouse with a mobile scanning solution that integrates directly with the ERP system.
Instead of a paper pick sheet, the warehouse picker arrives for work armed with a mobile inventory management solution that lists every product in the warehouse, quantity and bin location. The picker moves to the first bin location, scans the product with a barcode scanner to confirm it's the correct choice and confirms the quantity of product picked, which the mobile solution automatically updates in real time with the backend ERP system. A mobile solution offers improved productivity, picking accuracy and real-time visibility into operations.
Complex warehouses can justify a bigger investment in technology, but such expenditures may not be applicable in every situation. To determine where your warehouse falls, start with the operational challenge you want to solve, not with a technical solution. Robots may be great for a high-volume e-commerce warehouse but can't be justified in a small spare parts warehouse. The diagram below shows a range of technology options to improve picking operations.
Ready to Make a Change? We Can Help
If your warehouse remains stuck in an operational time warp with an inefficient paper picking process, you may want to consider the range of technology options now available. Innovapptive, a mobile warehouse management solution leader, has developed a customizable, easy-to-use mobile inventory application that increases warehouse productivity and accuracy. View a free demo here or call 888-464-6668 to learn more. Our experts are ready to answer your questions, listen to your needs, and configure a solution to overcome your warehouse challenges.
