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| A leading Print and Copy Center retailer made a strategic decision to greatly expand sales of office supplies in their retail stores. Previously, their east coast distribution center had stocked and distributed SKUs that were consumables in the print and copy operations of their stores. The new corporate strategy meant the DC would need to stock the new retail office supplies, doubling the number of SKUs and ship volume to their retail stores. |
In the previous warehouse configuration, the picking area consisted of a full pallet for each SKU. Cases and eaches were picked from these pallets onto a takeaway conveyor. Replenishment of picking pallets came from full pallets stored in a racked area in the back of the warehouse. When the pick velocity for each SKU was analyzed, it showed the following: |
- One pallet in the pick location was not sufficient for a small number of the fastest moving SKUs. These SKUs could require replenishment multiple times a day. Observation of the operation revealed the transition from the depleted picking pallet to the replacement pallet caused delays in the picking operation.
- For the majority of SKUs, one pallet in the pick location amounted to a month or more of SKU activity. While replenishing in full pallet quantities was efficient, pickers had to walk past pallets of SKUs that they rarely picked from. Analysis showed the picking inefficiency from increased travel time was far greater than efficiency of full-pallet replenishment.
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To determine the new warehouse configuration, warehouse slotting software was used to profile the optimal size of the picking locations with 1 week of picking activity in each location. Historical pick “hits” were used to analyze the existing consumable SKUs and sales forecasts were used for the new office supply SKUs. Results of the profiling analysis were the fastest moving SKUs would be picked from 2-deep pallet flow rack, a small number of SKUs would remain in a one pallet pick location, and the majority of the SKUs would be picked from carton flow rack or, for the slowest movers, decked rack. To minimize putaway at the retail stores, the slotting software slotted the SKUs into the new racking configuration by product families based on the store’s plan-o-gram. Additional constraints were set in the slotting software to insure no cases weighing more than 15 lb. were slotted on the top or bottom levels of the carton flow and decked rack for improved ergonomics, and to slot the fastest moving SKUs in the golden zone.
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The use of carton flow and decked rack instead of a full pallet pick position resulted in significant space savings, but still not enough to fit the increased storage requirements of the new office product SKUs. In order to best utilize the total cube of the 30’ height warehouse, racking was installed in the picking area, and the rack locations over the floor picking locations were used for reserve storage. Not only did this allow enough pallet locations to accommodate all the new SKUs, it also reduced replenishment time, since the replenishment pallet was generally over the pick location instead of in the back of the warehouse. |
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The result of the project was the warehouse was successfully able to double the number of SKUs stored and picked. While picking efficiency was not the main driver of the project, picks per hour are up 22% due to reduced walking time from the dense pick area.
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