Introduction
I’m delighted to introduce a major new feature for Peoplevox with the first release of a new pick method, pick by zone.
Zone picking divides the locations in your warehouse into pick zones and directs pickers to service individual zones rather than walk the length of the whole warehouse to pick items.
By having many pickers do shorter tasks simultaneously, you can save wasted walking time and get orders out the door faster.
This is just the first release of this feature, and there’s lots more to come. See below for more details.
SEPTEMBER LAUNCH USE CASES
This first launch is aimed at the following use cases, multi-item orders with sort are coming soon. See below.
- Single-item orders
Reduces walking and picking time if you process many single-item orders from all corners of your warehouse Zone. - Multi-item orders with separate dispatch
In this scenario, you dispatch each item from an order separately, usually because of their size and weight. - Multiple people pick one order by zones
Useful if you have huge orders where it would be more efficient to have several people picking items based on their location and then collating them at dispatch. - Multi-item orders with informal sort at dispatch
Many of our customers already follow a process where the main items are picked as usual, and then accessories or popular smaller items are grouped with them as part of the dispatch process. This can work well where there are repeated patterns, and the team are familiar enough with the products that sorting them is quick and easy.
PROVEN RESULTS TO DATE
Rep Fitness started using a beta version In April. Since then, they have been able to speed up picking considerably by reducing walking time for pickers and consolidating items needing special equipment into zones.
With large, heavy items needing dedicated equipment to pick, pickers working in those zones can pick continuously with forklifts and other equipment and significantly increase the overall pick rate compared to a single picker trying to pick over the whole warehouse.
- Daily picking time has reduced from taking all day to being completed in 2 hours
- It has enabled more structured working days – As well as getting orders out faster each day, the time saved has helped to enable the team to implement a more structured approach to replenishment and put-away with dedicated time in the morning for those tasks before they start picking
Pick By Zone supports Rep Fitness’ growth by allowing them to get orders out faster than ever before and enabling them to dedicate more time to stock control tasks in the warehouse.
COMING SOON
We are planning the second launch now and already have customers beta-testing the next stage. The next release will primarily focus on multi-item orders, which will be packed and shipped together. To support this, we are introducing a sortation process to follow picking. This will allow the items picked from different pick zones to be collated into complete orders and passed on for packing and dispatch.
