2-Phase Pick/Put Order Picking

This method is well suited to picking a wave of orders that have a reasonable degree of commonality of SKUs in the wave.  A good application would perhaps be filling store replenishment orders, based on Point-of-Sale data, since the same SKUs would likely be popular at several stores. After the wave of orders are downloaded, the FastFetch Optimizer PC sorts the line items in all orders by warehouse location. Based upon the number of locations on each cart, the Optimizer PC then assigns a set of contiguous locations (effectively  SKUs)  to each cart so that each cart will traverse a contiguous area of the picking area not traversed by any other cart.  See the diagram on this page while reading the explanation of the 2-Phase Pic/Put Method found below.

Phase 1 - the SKU Gathering Phase

During Phase 1, the carts will be dispatched to the picking area and when each required picking location is reached, the picker will be instructed to pick a quantity of SKUs from that location sufficient to fill all orders in the wave requiring that SKU.  The same picking methods of voice, light direction and bar code scanning, as described in 1-Phase Order Picking, are used to pick SKUs during Phase 1.

If SKUs picked don't contain bar coded labels, or are so small that they require "bagging" (e.g. small screws), FastFetch will ask the picker to put the SKUs in a container (e.g. a bag), apply a pre-printed bar code to the container and scan the bar code.  If necessary, using a small Bluetooth printer on the cart, the FastFetch PDA or Tabet PC can produce a bar coded label to be placed on the container with customer specific information found in the downloaded interface file.

Phase 2 - the Order Distribution Phase
During Phase 2, the carts loaded with SKUs from Phase 1 are moved to a warehouse "putting" area in which bays with "empty" order locations are found.  Each "empty" location will contain an shipping box, a tote or nothing (just an empty shelf location) to aggregate the lines for each order prior to packing/shipping.

When the cart arrives at a "putting" bay, the FastFetch system uses voice commands to instruct the cart operator to "STOP" and uses light modules on both cart and bay location(s) to alert the picker concerning which products should be transferred from the cart locations to the bay locations (orders) requiring those products.  As a part of normal FastFetch operation, cluster picking/puting is used to minimize walks from the cart to the bay and numeric displays or voice commands are used to instruct the picker of the quantity of products to be transferred from the cart to the bay.  This process continues until all orders on this bay requiring products on the cart are satisfied. The PDA or Tabet PC then uses voice commands to instruct the picker to proceed to the next putting bay.  The Phase 2 "putting" operation uses the same physical process as descdribed in Reverse Logistics.

Example Application
As an example, assume 5 carts, each with 10 locations, are used to pick a batch of 120 orders with 80 distinct SKUs (locations in picking area).  Further assume that the order putting area contains 3 bays, each with 40 locations to be used to store the entire batch of 120 orders (3 bays x 40 order-locations/bay = 120 orders).  Each cart will be assigned a contiguous area of the warehouse containing 16 distinct SKUs (80 SKUs / 5 carts) during Phase 1 of this method. 

Since each cart has only 10 locations but must store 16 SKUs, some cart locations must contain a mixture of SKUs.  In this example, FastFetch will assign solid SKUs to 7 of the 10 cart locations and mixed SKUs to 3 locations (where 3 is the number of putting bays in the warehouse putting area).  The allocation of SKUs to cart locations is based on the total quantity of each SKU to be stored on the cart so that the 7 solid SKU locations have larger quantities than those in the mixed SKU locations. 

Picking during Phase 1 proceeds as described above, with some SKUs being placed into solid SKU cart locations and some SKUs being placed into mixed SKU locations.  Order putting during Phase 2 first unloads SKUs from solid SKU cart locations, using light modules on both cart and bay locations, and then uses voice commands to direct the picker to unload all SKUs from the first mixed SKU location (using a flashing light adjacent to the location if lights are available on the cart) to the putting bay locations.  The picker is directed to scan the barcode on any product in the mixed SKU location and put the product into a bay location as identified by a red, flashing LED or voice command.  Touching the red, flashing LED or scanning the bay location bar code confirms correct placement into the order putting bay location.  Depending on a downloaded configuration parameter, FastFetch will allow or disallow the picker to transfer multiple identical SKUs simultaneously from the cart to order bay locations after a single bar code scan. 

This picking method can be used in multiple cart/bay configurations.  Click here to learn more.

Also see:  1-Phase Order Picking        2-Phase Picking with Dynamic Slotting        Reverse Logistics