In a fast-moving world of multi channel logistics, one clear message emerges: warehouses and picking operations need to be updated, with flexibility taking centre stage. This can be a highly complex issue because large amounts of data must be extracted to quantify and evaluate the trade offs between multiple pick methods. The preferred pick solution is a trade-off between capital investment and operational costs. Given the wide range of technologies available, with varying degrees of complexity, finding the best pick solution can be fiendishly demanding. Fortunately, however, there are well-experienced specialist consultants in this field to ease the task.
In order to cope with multi-channel shopping, suppliers have been forced by the new expectations of online shopping to enhance delivery speeds and picking accuracy. Gone are the days when consumers would tolerate waiting up to 28 days for a phoned in order to be delivered. But achieving these speeds and accuracies, consonant with the trade-off with capital spend and operational costs, will depend to some extent on the nature of stored goods and the choice of automated picking/sortation equipment, which can vary widely. In the clothing fashion business, for example, the Mona Lisa system from SDI Group based on overhead conveyors with pouches to hold hanging or flat product items, is much more cost effective than shuttles, buffer stock and conventional pallet and box conveyors. Moreover, Mona Lisa can take an hour or two off the time taken to get picked items to the packing station.
When trying to cope with a multi-channel delivery regime many companies will try to combine them under one existing roof but this can pose problems of space restriction. Extending a building’s size might not be an option and if it were it would be an expensive one. Some companies are solving the problem by resorting to mezzanines but another answer could be to narrow the forklift stacking aisles where conventional trucks are used by switching to articulated forklifts or dedicated VNA trucks, which could free up to 50% more space. Another solution could be the kind that Amazon is rolling out across America with its orange AGVs from its Kiva Systems subsidiary. Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, has said that by the end of this year 10,000 of these robots will be trundling around its American fulfilment centres bringing goods to the picker for boxing up for despatch, up from the current number of 1,300. The interesting point about this is that this modularly applied automation is not designed to replace many people, according to an Amazon spokeswoman. Rather, the Kiva AGVs will simply provide a lot more throughput with the same number of workers, enabling Amazon to build smaller facilities, fewer fulfilment centres, or both, greatly reducing capital expenditure either way.
Sometimes, of course, the route to greater picking efficiency can be achieved with mainly IT investments, like voice picking technology, for an outlay much less than automated hardware systems. The main reason for their popularity since launching some 10 years or so ago is their promise of an ROI measured in months rather than years, and achieved in various ways. One key advantage from voice picking is the virtual elimination of mispicks, said to be causing losses averaging £230,000 per distribution centre per year, according to one recent survey of US, UK, French and German supply chain managers. More than half the survey’s respondents reported a pick rate accuracy of less than 97%. The real figure for losses could be much more, however, because 19% of respondents did not measure the costs of their mispicks.
With hands-free voice picking, workers can raise their productivity, while other advantages cited include increased inventory accuracy, better training processes for new or seasonal staff and greater labour flexibility. Never have the techniques for order picking been so diverse and the task of picking the right picking solution so demanding.
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