Dynamic Pick face allocation – Often overlooked, but extremely useful in driving warehouse capacity and efficiency
When trying to manage capacity and efficiency within a warehouse operation, how you utilise your available storage space to get your products into the most appropriate location for picking can be extremely important, but also challenging. A method that has been around for a long time but that is still in many instances relatively unknown is to use dynamic pick face allocation for your products.
So what is dynamic pick face allocation?
This process is where each product that you pick within your warehouse is located in multiple pick faces across your warehouse to enable it to be constantly accessible. It may be that you do this simply to improve your warehouse storage capacity, alternatively it could be that you have certain products that are very regularly picked and you wish to have their access points spread across the warehouse to enable correlation of orders and minimal travel distances. Some industries where there are very high numbers of SKU within the business almost require dynamic pick face allocation by default as there would never be enough capacity to manage replenishment from reserve storage.
The advantage of dynamic multi-pick face allocation is that once items are received and put away in your warehouse you do not have to worry about replenishing them from reserve storage. As one pick face is depleted your system should naturally navigate you to the next pick face containing that product. This removes one of the key handling measures often associated with warehouse operations, the replenishment task.
How to deliver dynamic allocation?
This is not as simple a process as it may sound. The first thing that you need to be able to achieve full dynamic pick face allocation is an operating system or warehouse management system that can support dynamic allocation. We are often surprised at how often operating systems are in place that cannot support what is essentially a relatively basic requirement.
Assuming your system does have the capability to work in this dynamic fashion (it is always worth a conversation with your IT supplier if you don’t know if this function is available) the thing you need to consider is how suited to your product set is this type of solution.
If you tend to distribute bulky products that are held in full pallet locations with reserve storage held in racking ‘in the air’, then the chances are dynamic pick face allocation is of less importance to you. Dynamic allocation is much more suited when you have a large number of smaller products that are held in shelving type fixtures. So many operators we see struggle with finding pick face product with reserve storage often put on a top shelf on the fixture when you have too much to fit in the pick face. This often leads to delays in the picking process when an operative gets to an empty location and struggles to find the reserve storage which may not even be allocated to a dedicated location on the system.
When you have full dynamic allocation the operatives are typically sent to the live pick face which will be one of the locations the product is held in, until such times as that location is fully depleted and operatives are then sent to the next location on file for that product. The depleted location is then empty and ready for restocking with whichever product meets the criteria for that location. It does not need to be the same product, and if anything it could simply be down to chance as to when goods-in arrives for that product.
In some circumstances (where systems allow this) you may be able to configure your warehouse management system to allow multiple pick faces to be used concurrently. This may prove beneficial for allowing your warehouse management system to produce the optimal pick walk for a given order or set of orders, but should be considered carefully as this could lead to a considerable amount of honeycombing across your warehouse which has a knock-on effect to your overall capacity.
Some operations require a more hybrid approach where bulky faster moving lines are allocated to fixed locations and other products are allocated dynamically. The simple fact is the more complex your rule set the more intuitive your warehouse management system needs to be to enable you to work in this way.
So how does dynamic pick location allocation improve warehouse capacity?
If you think of a product that my arrive in cartons of 48 units, and you pick this product on a unit-by-unit basis, the standard approach would be to try and give this product a picking location that would ideally hold at least 1 case of product within the shelf fixture. That would mean however that once you had picked half the product, your shelf would be half empty, but you would have no opportunity to make further use of that shelf. In a dynamic picking model you may choose to split your 48 units across 2 locations of 24 units, or maybe even 3 locations of 16 units. In the latter example, once you have depleted the first 16 units you then have back within your capacity options a location completely empty for fresh product to be put away. You can then deplete the other two locations overtime following the same principles.
This approach can add significantly to your overall inventory capacity as this helps maintain the highest possible units and cubic volume measures per available fixture. It also speeds up the process for making locations available for new receipt product.
This type of warehouse picking solution will not work for every business but it is certainly worth considering when thinking about how to drive both capacity and efficiency. It is certainly the case that to make this kind of solution work well you need high quality warehouse management solution, and need to back this up with strong inventory management processes to ensure you keep track of your products throughout your warehouse solution.
If your current solution does not support dynamic pick face allocation then it may be worth considering bolting on an additional warehouse management package to your existing IT infrastructure to give you the capability to add this level of flexibility to your solution.
ASCALi helps businesses maximise capacity and efficiency within their warehouse operations. For an informal no obligation discussion please contact us to arrange an initial consultation to discuss your warehouse solution requirements.
