Warehouse Management

This is part 3 of the blog entry on Stocking Policy for the Warehouse Pick Face. Part-1 was about parameters that influence stocking policy in your pick face and in Part-2, a simple approach to formulating stocking policy for the pick face was discussed.

How does it all fit in if you are using Oracle WMS to manage your distribution centers?

Pick Face Definition

The physical space that constitutes pick face in your warehouse needs to be a separate sub-inventory. The individual storage bins in the pick face can be defined as locators in this sub-inventory. As discussed in my earlier post, you may choose to define locators using a Row, Rack and Bin criteria and assign a check digit for improving inventory accuracy. An excel spread sheet that makes it easier can be downloaded here. If the pick area stores a particular pack configuration e.g. cases, cartons, units, each, etc. you may also configure the pick unit of measure for the sub-inventory corresponding to this pack configuration. The pick unit of measure will let you configure pick rules that minimize material handling in your warehouse by fulfilling orders in integer multiples of pack configuration.

Dedicated and Floating Locators

Next step is to assign items to your pick face sub-inventory. Here you have two options. You can either dedicate specific locators to items or have a "floating" locator for the item in the sub-inventory i.e. assign items to sub-inventory without assigning a specific locator. As we discussed in the earlier post, you will likely dedicate your best locators to items with high pick frequency and uniform demand pattern.

Replenishment Setup

A pick face needs to be replenished from a reserve or a bulk storage area. The parameters for replenishment such as minimum quantity, maximum quantity and replenishment lot size can also be setup for items in the pick face. The replenishment lot size should be the UOM multiple of the higher level pack configuration e.g. if you replenish 2 full cases every time you replenish the pick face and each full case contains 24 EA, your replenishment lot size is 48 EA.

Replenishment Planning

The first  two steps take care of the setup needed for the pick face. In order to keep the items stocked in the pick face, it needs to be replenished at regular intervals. To do so, a min-max replenishment planning can be scheduled to run at regular interval say every 30 minutes. Replenishment planning will compute the replenishment quantity using the following equation:

Once the replenishment quantity is computed, the replenishment move orders are generated using replenishment lot size. The replenishment move orders that are generated at this point, do not have a source and destination locators identified. Pick and putaway rules let you do that.

Pick and Putaway Rules

Pick rule identifies the source locator for replenishment while putaway rules can be configured to identify the destination locator for replenishment. Putaway rule can be very easily used to select a destination locator that is dedicated to a particular item.

What about floating locators? This too can be achieved using putaway rules. If the item already exists in the pick face, a simple putaway rule can be configured to aggregate material at the same location. You can also use locator flex fields and SQL expression in the putaway rule to setup almost any business policy. The Rules Engine Example  (Note: 232247.1) document available on Metalink has sample setup and putaway rules example where locators can be assigned to items based on their ABC classification.

Replenishment Tasks

The pick and putaway rules are invoked during move order allocation. The allocation process also generates replenishment tasks that can be assigned to a warehouse resource for execution. The allocation process itself can either be carried out manually for a move order or allocated in batch using "Move Order Pick Slip report". The replenishment tasks can be dispatched to an eligible warehouse resource as any other pick tasks.

This concludes the 3-part series on stocking policy for your pick face. I will be very interested in knowing your thoughts, any specific challenges that you face or your own perspective on this topic.

This is of interest to all of you who worry about finding storage space for your items. Especially those with large number of items and multiple storage options :)

My previous blog posts (here, here and here) on stocking policy for your pick area can guide you in finding the optimal location for items. However if you have certain types of storage options in the warehouse with fixed cubic volume, what you need is the most cost effective way to slot items into various types of storage options commonly available in the warehouse. Art Avery has tried to do just that in this article. Art was also kind enough to send me the spreadsheet with the number crunching.

Sure, parameters in your warehouse may be different. The important thing is to understand the simple and yet elegant concept behind it and use it in your situation.