June - Modern Materials Handling

modern INFORMATION MANAGEMENTDeliveringthe goodsYou might be able to increaseproductivity by turning your pickingformula on its head and usingautomated storage, conveyance anddata collection technologies to bringgoods to your picker.By Bob Trebilcock, Executive EditorFor as long as there has been picking, sending aperson out to get the goods has been the wayto go. The concept is simple: Put the productaway in storage or a pick face, and when it’s time tofill an order, send a picker to that location to get thegoods. Let’s call that person-to-goods picking. It’s asafe bet that in some ancient Egyptian tomb there’s ahieroglyphic of a supervisor sending a worker to a centralstorage area to get the next block for the pyramids.But person-to-goods picking isn’t the only way togo. With the right order profile and volume, facilitiescan realize significant productivity gains by turning thetried and true picking formula on its head and employingautomated storage, conveyance and data collectiontechnologies to bring the goods to the person.Let’s call that goods-to-person picking. What kindof gains are we talking about? When it comes to slowmovingstock keeping units (SKUs), 100 picks per houris an average rate in a conventional warehouse. A goodsto-personpicking solution, on the other hand, can supportsustained picking rates of 450 to 800 picks perhour, depending on the product and the system, and upto 1,000 picks per hour during a portion of a shift.The gains in productivity come from keeping anassociate in one place to do the job and then automaticallydelivering the items to be picked from storage.“Engineering studies show that the person picking ina conventional warehouse spends 40% to 60% of theirtime walking to a pick face,” explains Ross Halket,director of automated systems for Schaefer SystemsInternational Inc (704-731-1625, www.ssi-schaefer.com). “By bringing the goods to a picker at an ergonomicallydesigned workstation, you eliminate the walkingtime between picks and enable more efficient pickingat the point where the task is being completed.”Early adopters have been the pharmaceutical, optical,as well as the health, beauty and cosmetics industries.More recently, the systems have been finding ahome in e-commerce fulfillment facilities, grocery distributioncenters and retailers. One end user installed asystem for kitting medical products for doctors’ offices.The common denominator in all of those examples isthat the systems are used to consolidate and automatethe handling of slow-moving items that get fewer than 25to 30 picks per hour. “Those have relatively low velocityof movement, but you need a lot of space for pick facesand a lot of time is spent picking them,” says Halket.What’s more, goods-to-person picking works best inan environment where there is a relatively high volume oftotal picks, says Ken Ruehrdanz, business developmentmanager for Dematic (877-725-7500, www.dematic.us).“Generally, you’re looking at a facility that might have todo 5,000 orders a day of one to three items,” he says.Automated goods-to-person picking solutionssupport pick rates of up to 800 picks per hour.30 J UNE 2009 / MODERN MATERIALS HANDLING mmh.com