In The Business Edge clients use the Wireless Warehouse to pick sales orders without paper. The Wireless Warehouse uses locations to both identify where inventory is and establish a flow for picking. A good warehouse flow will guarantee that no picker back tracks while picking an order. We will cover how locations are used to create and maintain a flow for picking. How a warehouse is set up will help determine how the flow should go. In scenarios where shelves are tightly packed together it is probably best to pick both sides of an aisle as you progress through it. Here is an example of a warehouse flow set up to pick both sides of an aisle:
Another option is to serpentine through the aisles as shown here:
Some warehouse will have wider aisles for forklift picking and might serpentine in a horizontal fashion as seen here:
The aisle make-up of the warehouse will lay a foundation for the flow. The individual locations are where the foundation is built upon and if properly created can be prepared for future growth in the warehouse as well. A location is made up of 4 key components: The warehouse aisle, the rack, the shelf in the rack, and finally the individual section of a shelf. Typically, these components are assigned either an alpha or numerical value and the values will alternate within the location. Here is an example of a typical location using this formula
We can look at the location A01A01 and know exactly where in the warehouse that is. The first alpha character A represents Aisle A. The first number 01 represents the #1 rack in Aisle A. The second alpha character A represents the bottom shelf of Rack 1. The second number 01 represents the first section of shelf A. Here is a diagram example of a rack breakdown from Aisle A using this location formula:
Proper Location set up can offer both flexibility for growth and structure for a sustainable picking flow.