Warehouse Performance: Shortened picking paths with optimized inventory reservation (part 2/4).

Do you still remember? In our last article "Warehouse performance: discovering and fully exploiting potential in the warehouse (Part 1/4)." we gave you an overview of the options for increasing efficiency in the warehouse. Now we'll take a look at the individual phases and start with the optimization of stock reservation.

Whether it makes sense to optimize the stock reservation depends on the current putaway strategy. As a rule, there is only potential for optimization if the items in the inventory are stored in several locations in the warehouse - sometimes even in different aisles. These many reservation options for individual order items are one of the most common reasons for excessively long picking routes and times for employees. The aim is to form strategically sensible combinations from the various available options in order to keep the walking distances for an order as short as possible.

With regard to the use of a putaway strategy in which the stock of an item is stored in only one location, there is initially no alternative for optimized stock reservation. However, this does not mean that optimization measures cannot also be implemented in this case. For example, through intelligent stock transfer processes as part of the "Warehouse Healing®" strategy, which we will discuss in more detail in Part 4.

Let us illustrate the optimization of the stock reservation with a practical example.

The colored markings show the individual storage locations of the goods to be picked. It immediately becomes clear that the reserved items are stored in different aisles and are far apart. This leads to long walking distances for the employees during the picking round. Assuming that the items are located in several places in the warehouse, this process can be solved in a much smarter way.

‍How doesthe solution work in practice? First of all, the optimization of stock reservation is based on the typology and layout of the picking areas in the warehouse. On this basis, the individual check sequences are also configured to the requirements and conditions in each area. The main objective of stock reservation within an order is to minimize the routes in relation to the stock to be reserved. In concrete terms, this means checking at which point in the warehouse the individual items can be reserved as close together as possible in order to achieve dense order picking. As a result of the stock reservation, the stock remains physically in the warehouse, but is no longer freely available.

You can see the difference in Figure 2: For one order, all items were reserved in one aisle, which minimized the picking routes and times in a round trip.

This measure increases the efficiency of order picking and is also a first step towards optimizing the intralogistics processes in the warehouse as a whole.

‍‍Asa connoisseur of the subject, you will now interject: But what about the other important reservation parameters such as First In First Out (FIFO), batch numbers or remaining lead times? You're right, these are still taken into account within the picking route reduction, or at least to a certain extent.

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‍Inpart 3 of Warehouse Performance, we look at the optimization of batch planning and the first steps towards an intelligent warehouse.

Would you like to learn more about the individual options for optimizing your performance in the warehouse? Please feel free to contact us.