Good ergonomics are often pushed as a selling point for forklifts but how many warehouse operators understand its key importance for order picking functions, not just for health reasons but also productivity rates? According to automated order picking specialist, Knapp UK, a key factor in uncovering the true costs of order picking is getting to grips with ergonomics because this heavily influences order picking rates. In most types of warehouses labour averages about 50% of total warehouse costs, and order picking is usually the costliest function, inventory holding costs excepted. The pressures on order picking are also far greater now than 10 years ago before online home delivery shopping took off because not only does it demand so much more discrete picking but also very fast, error-free picking to meet consumer demand for instant gratification. This is where automation can sort the quick from the dead.

chazAutomation, however, comes at a price, but the cost can be eased by adopting semi-automated investments and the more flexibility that is built into the system the better to cope with wild demand fluctuations. It should never be forgotten that sub-optimised use of automation will mean a longer payback period and so estimating demand is crucial. In this respect, e-commerce has made life more difficult for logistics companies, partly because of retailing ploys like Cyber Monday, which for one day only offers much lower consumer prices, leading to huge spikes in demand.

Parcel delivery company, UPS, suffered badly over this by misjudging demand over Christmas spending in 2013 and 2014. In the 2013 Christmas spending peak it was overwhelmed by unexpected, much higher demand, leading to serious delivery delays. To avoid repetition in the following Christmas it took on extra staff, invested in greater automation and bought new, more flexible, mobile sorting equipment to cope with sudden, unexpected demand surges. While the new investment coped well with December 22 and Cyber Monday last Christmas, demand had been less than expected on other days, and so there was a sub-optimised network during peak season, leading to excessive costs. In future, UPS will try to compensate by introducing new pricing strategies during peak seasons.

At the very basic level, optimising picking costs involves pick rates against labour and fixed costs and an essential pre-requisite is breaking down those against fast, medium and slow movers to ascertain maximum payback on alternative solutions. But where some automation is already in place there is still room for improvement, even when all the ergonomic benefits of goods to pickers are in place. Pick-to-voice and light systems, for example, can improve picking rates over paper picking by up to 35% and by up to 15% over hand held scanners, while eliminating almost all picking errors, so important to avoid the costly handling of returns from irate customers.

One must also not overlook very recent truck developments which enhance the picking process. Flexi Narrow Aisle, for example, last year introduced its articulated man-down FlexiPick for picking full pallet layers in answer to the pressures from e-commerce and avoid the need  to invest in high, fixed cost automation. Still on articulated forklifts, Translift Bendi has introduced a far more productive man-up combi-style order picker truck because, it claims, no other truck in the world can do both order picking and full pallet load handling concurrently, thanks to its separate independent set of forks a the back. Compared with other VNA pickers and stackers it is 60% cheaper and 60% faster. When the rear forks are not in use they can be folded up out of the way. No costly wire or rail guidance is needed, and because it dispenses with a 2-truck type of operation (order picker and reach truck) the wages bill is halved, saving £20,000 a year, plus all the other space-related savings that come from a VNA-style truck compared with a reach model.

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