Case Study 1 Receiving and Putting Away - East, West and North

Three companies approached SWS with variations on the same problem: Receiving and Putting Away. We treat each client individually because every warehouse is unique but these organisations presented us with different angles on what we previously considered a standard procedure.

Elm Park Storage in Bedford (East) wanted to include heights in its putaway algorithm. The United States Air force (West) wanted to put eighty different items into the same location and keep track of each one. Tablogix in Glasgow (North) had a huge warehouse with paint marks on the floor but no racking and they wanted to block stack the pallets with the facility to FIFO issue.

Elm Park ‘receive’ to locations which are the same height or taller than the article and interestingly, because they store product for third parties, they use the location coding and check digits supplied by their client. SWS is able to cater for location heights of any kind and will accept the location format from other warehouse systems. This is useful if you need a new system but you do not want to revisit the stone age (before SWS!) to set up locations all over again. A special report in spreadsheet format is exported to the client to show where stock is placed.

For the US Air Force and their multi product locations, we used our Multiple Location Coding format. Each location is given a unique code, for example ‘AAA01A’, describing the zone (A), the aisle (next A) the column or bay (the third A), the height and the side. We allow up to 9 characters to define a location and then as in this case, we add a slash code (/02 ../99) . Imagine your location is divided up into 99 sections and each section holds a different box of items. The computer will allocate one of these subsections to a product code. From the User’s point of view we see only the master code (AAA01A) while the SWS system applies its logic to placing the article into the appropriate subsection where it join others of the same code.

Finally, Tablogix. A large third party warehousing and logistics company with long experience, worldwide, of storage and handling. At their Glasgow site they ‘putaway’ to areas on the floor, five, six or more pallets high. Remember, there is no racking, just space! ‘Putaway’ is normally to the top of each block stack – but because there is often a rental charge and FIFO aspect to issues, pallets often have to be removed from the middle of the heap! SWS calls this process ‘Gravity’ feed and many people associate this with the term ‘Live storage’.

The procedure at Tablogix now works as follows:

The Pick List is produced and the driver removes the pallet from the stack. He/she returns to the office and ‘confirms’ the Issue. On receiving confirmation, SWS reconfigures its data to reflect the change in position of the remaining pallets in that stack. A record is then written to the charging routine for later invoicing.

Note: some sites have fixed locations – one-location-one-product code. It is not common practice and does not improve Warehouse Management Software efficiency because the SWS programmes look for empty locations near to existing similar products. Fixed locations are good for certain types of article. We normally make your picking locations fixed and the bulk locations allocated by the system rules. We have used multiple location codes right across our user base and can set the rules to provide combinations of multiple, mixed and same code ‘putaways’. Our installation consultants (SWS trained ) will advise you on the application of bulk, picking , fixed, free, multiple and mixed multiple locations.

If you have third party suppliers who need to inspect the stock you are holding on their behalf, why not add our ‘SIERRA’ web module which permits access to SWS on the Web from anywhere. This facility has major implications for users with more than one warehouse. Please email us for further information on this or our case studies.