ORDER PICKING OPTIMIZATION

Chapter eight RightPick RightShip: Order Picking and Shipping

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Progressive Order Assembly In progressive assembly (or pick-and-pass) systems, the contents of an order are passed from one zone to the next until the order is completely assembled (Figure 8.7). The contents of the order may move in a tote pan or carton on a conveyor from zone to zone, may be manually moved on a cart from zone to zone, or may move on pallets on a towline conveyor, automated guided vehicle, lift truck, or pallet jack from zone to zone. Intelligent progressive order assembly systems will only move an order’s container to a zone if there is an SKU for the order in that particular zone. This practice is called zone skipping . Downstream Sorting In zone picking with downstream sorting, there is no designation of an order during the picking process. Order pickers work in parallel, making full passes of their pick zone during a wave. Product is typically bar-code labeled as it is picked and placed into a large cart or onto a conveyor belt that passes alongside the pick line. The contents of the cart and/or the items on the take-away conveyor are then inducted into a sorting system that sorts the merchandise into customer orders. The cost of downstream sorting systems can run into the millions of dollars. Hence the incremental benefits of zone picking with downstream sorting compared with progressive order assembly must be sufficient to

Figure 8.7 Progressive order assembly

Zone

Zone 2

Zone 3

Zone 1

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