ORDER PICKING OPTIMIZATION

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World-Class Warehousing and Material Handling

Ford Service Parts At Ford’s service parts distribution centers (Figure 8.11), receipts arrive by rail in wire baskets, each identified with a bar-code license plate. The wire baskets are moved by a lift-truck operator to an automated receiving station. At the receiving station, the receiving operator scans the bar code to let the warehouse management system know that the item and cage are on site. The system then directs the operator to distribute the contents of the cage into one or more tote pans, each with a bar-code license plate. Each tote is, in turn, assigned to and conveyed to one of 54 horizontal carousels for put-away by the carousel operator. The carousel operators each work a pod of three carousels. A real-time warehouse management system interleaves the put-away and picking tasks. All picking is light directed, and the operator is also light directed to distribute each pick into order totes housed in flow rack adjacent to the carousels. Eighty percent of all part numbers and a corresponding portion of the activity in the distribution center are handled this way. Is this picking from storage? Yes, because the 54 carousels act as the reserve storage area. The entire inventory for an item is housed in the

Figure 8.11 Pick-from-storage order picking concept

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