A Warehouse Management System (WMS) is a foundation for improved operational efficiency, providing a series of building blocks that will act as a basis for efficient warehousing operations. Today we will look at one of the primary building blocks a WMS provides; Improved inventory record accuracy and the reduction in data processing errors that result […]
Along with the tangible and intangible characteristics, a benefit should be measured on management’s general level of responsiveness to the benefit. […]
For some companies, justification in a WMS is a matter of survival. Having the right material available at the right place and at the right time is no longer enough. […]
There are several advantages of using a warehouse management system (WMS) to direct product put-away to minimize operator decision making requirements. […]
There are many reasons you might want to use your warehouse management system to help determine where product should be stored. […]
Safety and Lean can and should go hand in hand. I recently did a lean tour of a large distribution center. Along with seeing many lean process ideas I learned they had a strong focus on employee safety. […]
A straight-forward way to improve pick labor productivity is to eliminate the travel back and forth to the office and the shipping/packaging areas between order picks. One way to accomplish this is to have one operator pick multiple orders at the same time, or Cluster Pick, if possible. […]
Using a Forward Pick strategy helps keep a smaller volume of inventory in easily accessible bins (Forward Pick) with the excess stock in remote bins (Reserve Storage) (Figure 1). The Forward Pick zone in a warehouse functions as a “warehouse within a warehouse”: many of the most popular SKUs are stored there in small amounts, […]
A basic principle to optimizing warehouse space is evaluating and selecting the most space efficient storage equipment. Using more dense storage equipment is a key factor to reduce space requirements. […]
Paying attention to the fastest selling items to make sure they are located in the most advantageous picking position will generate significant labor cost savings. If available space is a concern, slotting will also help improve storage utilization by focusing on the slowest movers to see if their assigned bin space can be reduced. […]