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modern productivity awardsseven line items and 14 units that werebeing picked across 24,000 possibleSKUs. With those order profiles, thepaper-driven, pick-to-cart fulfillmentprocesses in the old facility were manualand physically taxing.“In our old facility, we had a capacityfor about 24,000 SKUs,” says DeonWagner, director of warehouse operations.“We simply didn’t have the roomto add the new SKUs that our merchandisingteam wanted to bring in tocontinue to grow our business.”The combination of physical constraintsand the physicality of the job led tothe design of the new facility. “We wantedto support SKU proliferation with a pickzone that could hold up to 50,000 SKUs,”Wagner says. “And we wanted to drivepick density in our picking processes tominimize travel distances and pick times.”Explode and assembleThe solution was a highly integratedand flexible picking methodology thatbrings together an order managementsystem, WMS, WCS, conveyor andsortation system, and voice recognitiontechnology to find the optimal way topick and assemble a wave of orders.With this new ‘explode and assemble’methodology, orders still begin at theWMS, but the system creates a wave of8,000 to 10,000 orders and 100,000 unitsto be picked. That wave is passed to theWCS which determines the best wayexecution based on the order profile, itemlocations and the sorter workload.The WCS creates four picking andpacking subwaves; picking assignmentsare assigned to an induction location onthe double-density tilt tray sorter, andorders are assigned to a chute leadingto one of 600 packout locations.The WCS plans the work based onseveral criteria. It looks at which itemswill consume the entire contents ofa case. Those tasks are sent to a casebreak area. The idea is that associateswill pick by location rather than fill allthe items of an individual order. Thatway, a location is only visited once foreach wave.While picking, associates aredirected by the voice system to pickto up to 16 different totes until a caseis consumed. Filled totes are held in apick module until the sorter is ready forItems are picked to totes from a number of different picking zones and thenconveyed to one of the sorter induction areas, where they are placed on thetilt tray sortation system.a subwave. Then the associate releasesa tote to the takeaway conveyor, whichsends it to an induction point.That’s the explosion piece. For theassemble part, the tilt tray sorter identifiesthe items for a single order andsends them to a packout chute. After anorder is packed into a shipping container,it is conveyed to an automatic tape andsealing sorter and scanned again. If thecarton is 100% complete, it is sorted toan automated tape-sealing machine andcontinues to the shipping sorter.Smooth transitionThe transition to automation was smooth.Associates have gone from walking manymiles a day to less than one, which hassignificantly reduced staff turnover.What’s more, associates are cross trainedto ensure execution of the wave plan.But the most important benefit maybe for OTC’s DC to support 50,000SKUs in the future.System suppliersSystem design, integration andwarehouse control system:W&H Systems, whsystems.comWMS: Interlink Technologies,interlinktech.comConveyor/tilt tray sortation:Beumer, beumer.comConveyor/sortation: Intelligrated,intelligrated.comVoice recognition technology:Lucas Systems, lucasware.comPicking rack and mezzanine: UnarcoMaterial Handling, unarcorack.comPallet racking: Interlake Mecalux,interlakemecalux.comLift trucks: Crown Equipment Corp.,crown.comBar code scanning: MotorolaSolutions, motorolasolutions.comRadio frequency system: Psion,psion.comAppeared in the September 2010issue. Read the complete article:mmh.com/article/oriental_trading_company_gets_its_warehouse_under_controlmmh.com Modern Materials Handling / F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 37