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 your efficiency in the warehouse. Now we'll go into more detail about the individual options and start with optimizing inventory reservation.

Whether and to what extent it makes sense to optimize inventory reservation depends primarily on the current putaway strategy. As a rule, optimization potential only arises if the stored items are located in their inventory at several points in the warehouse - which sometimes also means different aisles. This is because these many reservation options for individual order items are one of the crucial points for excessively long picking paths and times for warehouse employees. The aim is to form strategically sensible combinations from the various available options in order to keep the walking distances as short as possible in relation to an order.

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 in no way means that optimization measures cannot also be implemented in this case. For example, through intelligent stock transfer processes in the course of the "Warehouse Healing®" strategy. We will discuss this strategy in more detail in Part 4.

But at this point, let us illustrate the optimization of inventory reservation with a concrete example from practice.

The different colored elements point to the individual storage locations where the goods to be picked are located. At first glance, it is immediately apparent that the reserved items are stored in different aisles and that the storage locations are apparently far apart. This means that the walking distances for the employees in the course of the picking round trip take up quite a bit of time. Under the aforementioned condition that the articles are to be found in several places in the warehouse, this process can be solved in a much smarter way.

‍Whatdoes the solution look like in practice? Optimization of inventory reservation is based first and foremost on the typology and layout of the picking areas in the warehouse. On this basis, the individual checking sequences are also to be configured to the requirements and circumstances on an area-by-area basis. The overriding objective of inventory reservation within an order is to minimize the number of paths to be taken in relation to the stocks to be reserved. In short: In the course of stock reservation, it is checked at which point in the warehouse the individual items can be reserved as close to each other as possible in order to achieve dense picking of the order. As a result of stock reservation, the stock initially remains physically in the warehouse, but is no longer freely available.

Here you can clearly see the difference in Figure 2. In relation to an order, all items have been reserved in a single aisle so that picking routes and times in a round trip are kept to a minimum for the employees. This not only ensures increased efficiency when picking orders, but is also a first step towards optimizing intralogistics processes in the warehouse as a whole.

‍Asan expert on the subject, you will now interject: But what about the other relevant reservation parameters such as First In First Out (FIFO), batch numbers or remaining lead times? You're right, these are still adhered to within the pick path reduction, or at least to a certain extent.

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Outlook: The 3rd part of Warehouse Performance is about the optimization of batch planning and 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.