Colossal
We dream big. The tallest
cranes, massive capacity
and maximum efficiency.
All of your goods to market,
fast. Come learn about the
Green Port of the Future at
www.polb.com/trade
www.POLB.com
away inbound merchandise promptly. That, in turn, was
compromising order pickers’ ability to fill orders swiftly.
With inventory missing from the pick bins either because it
had not been received or had not been restocked, order fill
rates and order accuracy were starting to suffer.
Those slowdowns and delays were unacceptable to
Pitman Creek. What makes the company unique in its
marketplace is its delivery speed. The company offers
same-day shipping to its customers, something its competitors do not, Johnson says. “We do not use a batch system
business model. Every live order is live. It’s sent directly
to the warehouse and immediately picked, packed, and
shipped,” he explains.
To turn the situation around, Pitman Creek purchased
the WarehouseOS solution from Warehouse Mobile
Solutions. A tablet-directed bar-code/order fulfillment
solution, WarehouseOS enables Pitman Creek to manage the flow of products from the time they are received
through putaway, replenishment, picking, and packing.
Today, this process involves 70 operators on the floor utilizing iPads that are connected to small Bluetooth scanners.
For purposes of putaway and picking, operators simply
scan items and locations as directed by the tablet devices.
With the system in place, the company now has the ability to track receipts throughout the facility, whether they’re
in a temporary home, a back stock area, or the pick/storage
locations. The solution also enables Pitman Creek to generate constant restocking reports so it can ensure the home
pick locations are always filled, increasing the efficiency
and speed of pickers.
On top of that, the WarehouseOS solution has enabled
Pitman Creek to run a picking and packing incentive pro-
gram for personnel based on their production. Following
the initial implementation phase, the company launched
an incentive-based structure for warehouse employees
that provided for workers to be paid by the units pro-
duced through picking, packing, and putaway, taking into
account the accuracy of work as a qualifier. “This has been
the single most productive program we have put in place
to date,” Johnson says. “Our speed to shelf has never been
faster, and we are [getting] more orders out than ever
before with fewer resources in place.”
As for the project’s timeline, full implementation of the
solution, including the new incentive system, was around
three months. Since going live with WarehouseOS in
August 2015, Pitman Creek has seen an increase in output,
better inventory accuracy, and more effective allocation of
resources. Among other gains, picks per minute per oper-
ator went from less than six to as high as 9. 9 (almost 500
picks per hour), daily fill rates (orders shipped the same
day) went from 84 percent to more than 92 percent, and
output pieces per minute for the overall facility increased
from 45 to 110 units of picks per man-hour, resulting in an
average of 10,000 pieces per hour.
