Question

Primary Picking

  • 17 July 2023
  • 6 replies
  • 121 views

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

I am wanting to create a primary picking and a secondary picking location for my inventory.  I have tried availability controls to mark as “over stock” and have that availability control set to not auto reserve.  This works somewhat, but if the pick ticket is over the quantity in bins with out the availability control we struggled.  

Replenishment happens daily to the optimized pick paths, but sometimes that isn’t fast enough and I would like to direct picking according to availability as well as FIFO.  

Any options outside of availability controls?  


6 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +11

Hi @DarinHowrey  have you explored using Storage Zones/Putaway Zones?

There are many different scenarios you can manage with these concepts.  If I read between the lines it sounds like you have a main picking area and then bulk storage elsewhere in your facility.  

You can configure the application to first reserve from the locations closest to your main picking area then to your bulk area.  

Perhaps you can also create a Kanban circuit to move material from bulk storage to picking.

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

Great!  You are almost spot on with our needs.  How do I configure the application to first reserve from the locations closest to my main picking area then to my bulk area?  I am working in cloud based IFS

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Not sure which version you are using but from APPS10 you can use a concept called storage zones and add ranking to that e.g. have picking area as one zone and bulk area as another zone. Then you can configure on the reservation logic to reserve in a storage zone ranking order. You can also configure that quantities equal to full pallets gets reserved in the bulk area. 

//Fredrik

Userlevel 4
Badge +11

Hi @DarinHowrey,

As Fredrik mentioned you can set this up using storage zones.  

At a high level you would need to create the following:

  1.  Inventory Locations for Bulk and Picking areas
  2. Storage Zones
    1. These are Site specific and essentially a collection or grouping of locations.  To perform a simple test so that you’re more comfortable with the logic, I’d recommend creating two storage zones (one for Bulk and one for Picking).
      1. Select the relevant locations for each storage zone.
  3. Putaway Zones
    1. These are also Site specific and they are a collection of Storage Zones.  When adding Storage Zones, you have the ability to rank them (the lower the number, the higher the priority).  Not sure if you are using Handling Units - if you are, there’s a little bit of additional complexity.  
  4. Site/Warehouse Management/Automatic Reservation
    1. Ensure that the highest priority for Automatic Reservation is defined as Highest Putaway Zone Ranking
  5. Perform some testing

As you can imagine, it’s possible you may need to tweak a step here or there depending on what other parameters may be important (i.e. handling units, expiration date, FIFO, etc.)

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

WOW!  Thank you.  I got some of my team members watching this string and saw it before I did and they have started testing.  Pre-lims look good some sites are already on to testing.  Thanks again for the answer.  I’ll jump back on here with the outcome in a few weeks!

 

Userlevel 4
Badge +11

Great!  Yes, please post your outcome when known as it may help other folks at a later date.  

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