The process was also error prone.
With workers picking to lengthy pick
lists, it’s probably no surprise that
accuracy hovered below 94 percent.
Beyond that, the work tended to be
physically challenging. In some
cases, workers had to climb a ladder
to retrieve bins that weighed as
much as 75 pounds.
On top of that, the process was
inefficient. Because pickers were
going out to retrieve items order by
order, there was a lot of picking
redundancy. “We would build one
kit at a time working against a work
order or a sales order,” recalls Tim
Squeeze More Out Of Your Warehouse
Need more warehouse
space? You may already have
it. When you’re faced with
big storage challenges, think
of one little word: Cube –
the total space a stored item
occupies. Using a CubiScan
cubing and weighing
system to collect more
accurate cube
measurements, you can
better optimize warehouse
space, carton selection, and
shipment planning. It’s
as simple as that. The
CubiScan is fast, accurate,
and a powerful tool for
improving your warehouse
and distribution
efficiency.
1-800-488-CUBE · www.cubiscan.com · Quantronix, Inc. · 380 South 200 West · P.O. Box 929
Farmington, Utah 84025 USA · (801) 451-7000 · Fax: (801) 451-0502
O’Brien, the company’s materials manager. “But we would find ourselves going to
the same bins several times a day.”
The problem came to a head when
three of the five pickers announced plans
to retire, and word came down that no
replacements would be hired. That meant
managers needed to quickly come up with
a way to accomplish the same amount of
work, if not more, with less than half the
previous staff. The only way to do that
and still maintain high service levels,
company managers concluded, was
through automation.
Riding along on a carousel
After investigating several options, Saia-Burgess found a solution in horizontal
carousels from Remstar. The units, which
feature an oval track with rotating shelved
bins that deliver items to the operator,
promised to solve two of the operation’s
most pressing problems: space and labor.
The four carousels Saia-Burgess installed
can accommodate some 70 percent of the
parts and components that used to sit on
shelving; now, only the larger bulk items
are stored on the shelves. Plus, with the
new automated system, work that used to
take five people can now be done with two.
(The two remaining workers operate on
different shifts, with one person primarily
responsible for replenishing the carousels
and the other handling picking tasks.)
Today, the picking process looks far different than it did a year or so ago. To
begin with, the paper lists are gone. The
entire picking process is now managed by
sophisticated software. Remstar’s FastPic
software interfaces with Saia-Burgess’s
Movex materials requirement planning
system to manage the picking within the
storage carousels. The two software systems also keep track of inventories independently, which is helpful when it comes
to verifying and cross-checking information on what parts and components are
currently on hand.
Under the new system, the four
carousels all feed into a single workstation,
where the picker can batch pick items for
up to six orders at once. This represents a
huge leap in efficiency over the old system
because it allows any SKUs needed for
multiple orders to be picked at one time.
