The location system of inventory replenishment method consists of two elements: 1. The inspection area is separated from the inventory area; 2. The location is associated with the inventory quantity.
The goods inspection area is separated from the inventory area. On the surface, the inspector's inspection path is shortened, and the three-dimensional storage mode can be used in the inventory area, which has obvious advantages, but it also leads to complex system logic, especially replenishment logic, which is difficult to operate.
There are obvious advantages in binding the location of goods with the inventory quantity. If this idea is carried out to the extreme, the cargo positioning system to be introduced in this paper will naturally appear. It's better to call it the warehouse system with inventory warehouse binding, or Bin system for short, which is Amazon's warehouse management system.
Operation flow of silo system
1. Received:
When receiving goods, the purchase order is actually regarded as a cargo hold and the van is regarded as another cargo hold. The consignee transfers the goods one by one from the location of the purchase order to the location of the truck. This operation has high precision and efficiency.
2. On the shelf:
Shelf is actually the process of transferring goods from the cargo compartment (van) to the cargo compartment for storage.
Shelving operations are carried out in batches, each truck is regarded as a batch, and a batch contains multiple shelving operations. Only one SKU is involved in each shelve operation. During the operation, the information that needs to be input into the system includes: shelf SKU, target location and shelf quantity (the batch number already contains the information of truck location).
Under the cabinet system, because the storage space is bound to the quantity of goods, it is not necessary to put a SKU on the same storage space at one time, but it can be flexibly arranged to two, three or even more storage spaces according to the actual situation of the remaining shelves.
It can be seen that under the container system, shelf workers have considerable flexibility, and they can put goods in places with gaps. Although this kind of warehouse looks messy, there are all kinds of things on the shelves, but in fact all the information is stored in the storage system, and any demand can be met at any time.
3. Inventory:
Under the Bin system, there are several SKUs in each storage location, and the quantity of each SKU is stored in the location system. In addition, because each actual inventory operation corresponds to the system, the actual inventory and the system are updated synchronously.
In this case, the inventory can be operated at any time and any place. In an instant, the operation of putting goods on shelves at the same time of inventory has no influence on the accuracy of inventory. This is something that no other system can do.
4. Inspection of goods:
In Bin system, because the cargo location is bound to the cargo quantity, the cargo inspection location can be specified when the cargo inspection batch is generated, and the route planning system will only consider the specified cargo location with cargo inspection requirements.
For example, the order requires 10 SKUs, but the current available inventory * * * is 23 SKUs, and these 23 commodities are located in positions A, B, C, B and C, with 8, 9 and 6 respectively, then the system will use 10 of them, for example, positions A and B have 8 and 2 respectively, then use.
When inspecting goods, the inspection path will be automatically planned according to all occupied inventory positions. Only "order occupied inventory" can be detected during inspection, but ordinary inventory cannot be detected.
The goods detected during the inspection are placed in the inspection container, which is also a special cargo hold.
5. Transportation:
At the time of shipment, the goods contained in the order are transferred from the inspection container to the packaging, and the packaging number can also be tracked.
To sum up, Bin system realizes the ultimate binding relationship among goods, location and quantity. The benefits of doing so are obvious to all. The storage system used by Amazon is consistent with the above in principle, supporting an annual sales scale of 40 billion US dollars, which can fully support a larger scale.
However, we must be soberly aware that the Bin system can achieve accurate inventory management, but the cost is very high. First of all, although the structure of the Bin system database is relatively simple, it has a large amount of data, and any inventory transfer operation must be synchronized with the system, which causes a great load on the reading and writing of the database and requires high reliability and stability of the database system. Secondly, all the operations of inventory transfer and system synchronization need equipment, which must be movable, equivalent to every operator. This investment is also very huge. Take the most commonly used symbol RF mobile scanning gun as an example, one will cost nearly 8000 yuan. If every operator has one, the equipment investment is very large.
Key points of Bin system
1. Mark the whole warehouse and all physical spaces for placing goods as containers (in fact, they are cargo spaces), and containers bind goods and their inventory quantities.
Taking the receiving process as an example, in the Bin system, after receiving the purchase order, the operator often puts the collected items on the van (pallet or car), and then the van is a container. The van has its own number (that is, it is equivalent to the location number), and all the goods on this van and their quantities are bound together.
There is a many-to-many relationship between trucks and purchase orders, that is, if the purchase order is large, the goods can be put on multiple trucks, and if the purchase order is small, they can also be put on one truck.
After using the Bin system, you can clearly see two benefits:
A. In the past, when receiving goods, the received quantity was often confirmed in the system after counting the confirmed quantity; After adopting the container system, the purchase order can be regarded as a location, and the receiving action is to transfer the goods from the location of the purchase order to the location of the van. So when receiving goods, you can scan and receive goods at the same time. In this way, the efficiency is improved by combining receiving and counting. More importantly, the way of scanning one by one is actually system counting, and the receiving personnel can focus on checking whether the goods are qualified, thus improving the receiving quality.
B. After receiving the goods, since the goods on the truck and their quantity are recorded in the system, the rack loader can directly put the goods on the shelves. It can be put on the shelves directly according to the data of the van without matching the purchase order data. This is beneficial to the balance of the workload of shelf personnel and also improves the accuracy.
2. Different containers have different properties and correspond to different operation tasks.
The goods in the warehouse are actually in the process of continuous circulation, involving operations such as receiving goods, shelving, warehousing, inspection and delivery, which may be initiated due to the demand for orders, transfers and returns. The container (cargo space) involved in each operation link is set with different attributes and can only be used by the corresponding operation.
In other words, containers used for receiving goods can only be used for receiving goods and related operations, such as shelving, and cannot be used for inspection; Containers for return inspection can only be used for return inspection, not for order inspection.
After this regulation, containers can only be used in operations associated with their properties, and cannot be abused, thus reducing errors in operations. For example, after receiving the goods, the received goods can only be placed on the van at the receiving place, but not on the van used for inspection, so that there will be no confusion.
3. Data structure design, SKUs and positions are many-to-many, one SKU can be stored in multiple positions, and one position can also store multiple SKUs.
Record the number of each SKU in each location. In addition, the concept of current inventory attribute needs to be introduced. The inventory quantity corresponds to several classifications referenced in the inventory structure.
4. Any position change operation must be synchronized with the system.
For example, in the operation of moving goods (goods are moved from one location to another), the parameters that need to be input into the system are: SKU quantity of moving goods, quantity of moving goods, source location and target location. For example, when SKUO moves from position A to position b n times, the data of relevant positions before and after the cargo moving operation are recorded as follows:
For another example, when inspecting the goods, if the goods are inspected in kind, the location of the goods, the SKU number of the goods and the quantity of the goods need to be entered in the system. In the actual inspection operation, the system often specifies the location of the goods, and the operator walks to a cargo location according to the system prompt, removes the goods, scans the SKU, and completes the inspection operation. For your reference, there are many warehousing-related problems that you can learn about.