The Matching Game

Sorting Through Your Order Consolidation System

How is your amalgamation program going?

You might pause at that question and wonder if there is a new department program that you missed or if Jack Welch coined a new phrase and created a task force focused on something you missed in your business goals. The word amalgamate means to merge, join, combine, unite, or integrate. So the real question is: Do you have an established, integrated methodology for combining piece-picked SKUs for your customer orders?

There are a number of techniques used to join multiple items for a single customer or store order and some are more effective than others. A common approach is to pick broken case orders from various locations within a distribution facility, pack them in cartons or totes, and then convey the containers to a sortation system. At the dock area, the totes are received, sometimes checked, labeled, and then stacked in a truck for delivery.

Another method is a “put” or “consolidation” system. Broken case orders can be picked and then sorted into individual store cartons or totes prior to shipping. All of the consolidation is directed by lights, which improves pick/put accuracy and allows the operator to work much faster than if they were using RF, voice, or paper methods.

Let’s consider one approach that could streamline your “amalgamation” program. The graphic below shows a basic plan view of a Pre-Distribution Area (PD area), which includes multiple carousel pods and a conveyor system that delivers totes and takes them away to shipping.

1. SKUs are delivered to the PD area behind the operators. The SKUs arrive in cases, cartons, or in picked totes from stock.
2. SKU totes are sorted to the appropriate carousel pod. This may be in product groupings or store groupings.
3. Products are sorted into the correct store cartons in the carousel pods.
4. When the store cartons are full, they are placed on a conveyor for delivery to the sorter and then sent to shipping.
5. Empty cartons are re-supplied from the adjacent space next to the pods.

More specifically, there are a number of steps that the operator will perform during this consolidation stage.

1. The operator loads a group of six or eight full SKU totes or cartons into the active batch space on the conveyor in front of the carousel pod. These totes or cartons will be pulled in from the incoming conveyor queue line.
2. The operator enters the sort mode on the keyboard of the workstation computer.
3. The operator registers (scans) the eight tote IDs to the sort bar locations in the active batch.
4. The carousel software sorts the pending puts in optimized bin sequence and rotates all carousel bins to the first "put to" location.
5. When the carousel stops at the correct location, the key trees indicate the quantities to put into every store that requires the SKU in the pick face (up to eight stores). A single sort bar location will indicate the total quantity to pick from that SKU tote for that pick face.

6. The operator picks the total quantity of products from the SKU tote or carton where the sort bar indicates.
7. The operator puts the products (in the quantities shown) into the required store cartons.
8. The operator hits a task complete button on the key tree location after each store put has been completed. This tells the system the pick has been completed.
9. The operator turns back to the active batch and repeats step 6 (picks products from totes).
10. The picking process is repeated until all the puts are completed (in that batch of totes).

The goal of the system workspace design is to make the human operator as productive as possible. The position of the equipment surrounding the operator is really an extension of the tasks involved in the carousel pod. Operations such as store distribution involve picking from SKU totes or cartons and putting into store cartons hundreds of times per hour. The physical operations, which must take place, are the primary functions, which govern how to design a system workspace.

Depending on the SKU mix, order volume, wave size, and floor space availability, the system could look like this in a typical distribution facility.

What are the benefits of a system like this?

• High speed put or consolidation of 250-1000 lines per hour
• Store/department OR order based design
• Automatic or manual SKU registration
• Pick label, tote label, order manifests at each station
• Order fill and shipping by wave to match full case order waves

This is just one system solution for order consolidation (or amalgamation). At Diamond, we take pride in delivering high quality, on-time and on-budget integrated systems. We believe that in order to design an ideal solution for your unique application, we must work side by side with you to gain an understanding of your business and carefully analyze your needs. Our engineering and systems design staff have the knowledge and experience to study and analyze data, and develop creative solutions to your materials storage and handling requirements. Use of the most current technology in computer software, automatic identification, high-speed communications, and management information systems insures the maximum possible return on investment for our customers.