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Take a fresh look at order fulfillment
Traditionally, warehouses line up racks in parallel lines and any cross aisles are perpendicular to those rack lines. You can get many rows of rack in your building using this layout.
This arrangement may not be the most productive for picking orders, however. It may pay you to think outside the traditional "box."
Full pallet designs
That's what two engineering professors, Russell Meller, of the University of Arkansas Center for Engineering Logistics and Distribution, and Kevin Gue, of Auburn University, did. They studied what would happen if cross aisles were not straight in a typical unit load warehouse where picking involved moving an entire pallet.
The flying v model
One model used a design with two diagonal cross aisles that begin at the same pickup and deposit point. Viewed from above, as shown in Drawing 1, the cross aisles form a V along one side of the warehouse.
Compared to a traditional unit-load warehouse with 21 aisles and no cross aisles, this model reduced picking costs by 11.2 percent.
 The fishbone model
A second model reduced picking costs by 20.4 percent. When viewed from above as in Drawing 2, this model resembles a fishbone design. It used the V-shaped cross aisles with the V extending across the entire warehouse.
The picking aisles below the V are horizontal, while the aisles above the V are vertical.
The professors admit both designs require a slightly larger (3-5 percent) footprint than a traditional layout. They believe the savings in operational costs offset the additional cost of space. They point out their results are correct when travel begins and ends at the single pickup-and-deposit point in the center of the bottom of each design, and workers travel
to a single location and directly back to the deposit point.
Smaller load designs
If you don't pick full pallet loads and haven't invested in sophisticated software to help you provide detailed picking route instructions to your order pickers, perhaps one of these simple routes can help. They may reduce pickers' travel and selection time to increase productivity.
 The S-shaped travel path
In the S-shaped travel path shown in Drawing 3, the picker simply moves up and down each row, selecting all of the items on the pick list. If there are no scheduled picks in a particular aisle, that aisle can be skipped. This method is easy to understand, so new or temporary employees can quickly grasp the concept. Its drawbacks are that it creates more travel than more complex strategies and works best in rather short aisles without a lot of cross aisles.
 The largest gap method
A little more complex approach is called the largest gap method, shown in Drawing 4. Knowing the distance between pick locations, the picker goes down the aisle as far as the largest distance (or gap) between the two picks. At that point, he turns around and retraces his steps, moving on to the next aisle.
This method is most useful when aisles are shorter, so it minimizes the distance the employee has to travel twice. It also works well when there are few unique picks per aisle. If your pick locations in each aisle are numbered sequentially, the pickers can determine a basic route, or you could use a simple software program to do this for you.
Remember that our line of Mitsubishi forklift trucks allows you to choose the models that best meet your material handling needs. Your local dealer can help you think through the best warehouse strategy for your operations. Give them a call soon to learn more. |
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