Order picking

The market situation is that a few large producers of frozen and chilled foods supply a large number of retailers. This had led to the development of distribution stores, where goods are delivered in bulk, stored for a short time, order-picked and then sent out to the individual supermarkets and other outlets. 

The Sales Order Processing system is likely to be one of the prime sources of information used should any product recall activity become necessary. Depending on the type of Sales Order Processing System, it may have interfaces to other systems that electronically feed in sales orders to the organization and to automated or manual order picking systems. 

Bins would normally be used for small light items, particularly in wholesale warehouses, for individual pharmacy order picking. There could also be a gravity feed system of depalletised cases from a bulk stock area. 

An order picking warehouse has different problems to the more conventional bulk warehouse. Goods are picked from racking or bins, either by hand or lately by more sophisticated electronically controlled robotic systems for despatch. Depending on the warehouse type, the journey may be long distance by lorry with manual and/or mechanical handling in example A above, or into a basket into the back of a van in example B. 

To order pick 1000 kg, each item individually 22.00 (expressed as a handling cost). 

Figure 1 Flow Lines Can Be Operation-Only, Order-Picking, Assembly, or Disassembly Lines. (From Work Design Industrial Ergonomics, 5th Ed., by S. Konz and S. Johnson. Copyright 2(XX) by Holcomb Hathaway, Pub., Scottsdale, AZ. Reprinted with permission)...

What is the impact of customer ordering changes on order picking requirements ... 

This methodology is appropriate for equipment planning for aU warehouse activities receiving, shipping, storage, order picking, and data processing. 

What order-picking philosophy wUl be used zone picking, full-order picking, simultaneous picking of multiple orders ... 

From this base, the planning team considered altemahves that ranged from simple procedural changes that could be implemented immediately to extensive automated sortation designs that required time and capital. With many considerations, the team recognized that the order-selection process was the most labor-intensive activity performed in the customer s warehouse. As a result, it offered the greatest opportunity for improvement. The team identified and implemented several ideas to reduce the order-picking costs ... 

This chapter presents the main concepts of warehouse management. First, there is a functional description of a typical warehouse operation, with emphasis on order picking because that is where most of the labor costs in a warehouse are incurred. This is followed by a discussion of strategic and tactical factors for warehouse operation, and then a discussion of database considerations for WMS. The last part of the chapter describes how users interact with a WMS and what functions they should expect it to perform. The purpose here is not to describe how the WMS is structured, since that varies with the software vendors, but rather to present a user s viewpoint of the major aspects of the system. 

A functional structure of a warehouse with order-picking activities, as shown in Figure 1, consists of at least 8 functional areas (departments) and more than 15 material flows (represented by arrows) with various load types (Yoon and Sharp 1996). This functional structure is a road map, and not all facilities will contain all departments and flows. The major departments can be categorized as breakdown or consolidation area, based on major functions, and as storage or transfer area, based on the duration of product stay ... 

Figure 1 Functional Structure of a Warehouse with Order Picking.

Single-order-pick One picker works on one order at a time until the order is filled. Sort-while-pick, no zoning One picker works on several orders at time with a vehicle that has compartments for maintaining order integrity. 

Single order pick with r zone 1 I zone 2 1 zone 3 r zone 4 1 zone 5... 

Single order pick with simultaneous zoning, order is split into suborders which are picked at the same time... 

Amirhosseini, M. M. (1999), Effect of lime Windows and Zoning, in Advanced Order Picking Short Course, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, pp. 1-10. 

Choe, K.-I. (1991), Aisle-Based Order Pick Systems with Batching, Zoning and Sotting, Ph.D. thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. 

Warehousing requires that raw materials, additives, spare parts, molds, tools, molded products, and so on be stored and handled safely and economically. Various systems are available to meet different needs in warehousing. They can handle schemes for integrating the inward and outward flow of goods, order picking and transportation, factory administration, and process control for warehousing tasks. 

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