In Part I of the series on Initiating A Successful Next-Day Delivery Program I noted that creating a successful next-day delivery service depends on 9 steps.
(Courtesy: Bill Haslam at flickr.com)
1. Assessing your order history
2. Dynamic Order versus Wave Management
3. The proper software to use
4. An accurate inventory
5. Labor management
6. Storage
7. Picking
8. Replenishing Inventory
9. Assessing Packing and Shipping
In that article I discussed steps 1 through 5. In Part II I will discuss the remaining steps.
Labor Management
It is well understood that labor management is an essential part of a successful program to offer next-day delivery. Many warehouses are using Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) to perform this task. However, this solution is lacking a real-time component. Executives who have initiated a next-day delivery service have found that warehouses need to incorporate both WMS along with continuous flow solutions because it has the ability to measure labor involvement in real time. It helps executives to see the trends in labor performance and make any necessary reassignments. This assures that there is a consistent flow of work.
Storage
How you set up your storage infrastructure has a major impact on how quick and efficient a warehouse can react in order to perform a successful next-day delivery service. Flow racks or put walls that allow for replenishing shelves on one side as you pick items from the other side can prove to be ideal for next-day delivery service. Using software that helps to place SKUs in pick areas help make picking more productive because fast moving items are in easy reach.
Picking
You will also be required to pick smarter. This means that you will need to analyze order profiles in the most optimum way to get an effective solution. Thus, products should be put where they can be picked with less travel. For e-commerce order profiles that involve high variability, fairly heavy volume and more SKUs, a goods-to person system could prove ideal. This type of storage solution stores goods densely and use robotic sleds to travel along the top of the storage system to retrieve totes and bring the needed goods to a person consolidating the order. Thus, Picking modules may prove ideal.
Replenishing Inventory
Quicker, more efficient picking requires quicker and more efficient replenishing. Solutions including WMS and Warehouse Execution Systems (WES) are ideal solutions because they are demand driven and tied to near real-time knowledge of pick rates and which items are being depleted. This is essential to avoid shortages in forward pick areas.
Assessing Packing and Shipping
Distribution centers that have separate pack out and ship out areas may want to combine these steps to gain more efficiency and use bar code validation to improve accuracy. Workers can be outfitted with ring scanners so that they can scan bar codes on items to validate that the correct items are placed into the proper package. This will speed up the process and assure accuracy better than inspecting or cross referencing paper lists or packing list data on screens. With some products coming from manufacturers in pre-packed, shippable boxes including lamps or ceiling fans, shipping software can support a pick-to-label process in which shipping software can generate shipping labels for the goods, permitting pickers to put the labels on products as they are picked. These items can then bypass the full pack/ship step. Shipping solutions can also assure that orders are put into the appropriate sized cartons, avoiding extra shipping costs from carriers. Shipping solutions can also provide address verification functionality that analyzes the ship-to-address against address databases for accuracy.
It’s obvious that a successful next-day delivery service needs to use many different software or solutions to enhance productivity and accuracy in picking and shipping.