Wave number management can help pick goods in an orderly manner, so that the warehouse can still leave the warehouse on time when facing large orders.
1 WMS- the meaning of wave
Sowing sorting is to sort orders according to different order structures, picking lines or other dividing standards (see WMS wave picking dividing method in this series for details), and to summarize multiple orders to generate a batch as a unit to guide inventory allocation and one-time picking, so that each picker can be in a batch.
(There is also a "quasi-sowing" sorting method for sorting goods at the same time, which will not be discussed in this paper for the time being. )
The batch of this work is usually called "wave number" in the industry. This order has a uniform batch number.
More generally speaking, picking is to sort orders. Its appearance is to facilitate users to choose the preferred picking method according to the analysis results and balance the workload of the operation and the use of resources.
On the day of promotion, orders basically increased exponentially, which directly led to the inability to process these orders in time and quickly, resulting in problems such as frequent replenishment times, large picking volume, long picking queue, roadway congestion, unfamiliar temporary workers, and excessive and scattered SKUs. In addition, employees who are temporarily placed due to business needs are unfamiliar with business processes and prone to errors and omissions. At this time, there is basically no extra manpower in the warehouse to deal with these mistakes and omissions, which will affect the whole body, lead to untimely delivery, and often send the wrong goods, directly causing economic losses of enterprises.
Take the large-scale e-commerce warehouse as an example, the daily average single volume is usually above 1 10,000, and the single volume increases geometrically during the promotion period. Then its order may have the following conditions:
There are j "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J" 10 SKUs, which are tens of thousands of emergency orders, single orders, multiple orders and urgent orders. Under the above circumstances, a single workflow cannot meet the batch processing requirements of different types of orders.
In order to achieve higher work efficiency, sowing and sorting generally hope to summarize more orders per wave. However, due to the following reasons, the number of orders summarized in each wave is not as high as possible.
1) Time limit for order completion
Generally speaking, the order completion time of the distribution center (from order confirmation to the completion of goods sorting and packing) should be as short as possible. If there are too many orders in a wave, the order completion time will be longer, which will delay the delivery time agreed with customers.
2) Feasibility of cargo handling and transportation
If there are many orders in a wave, the goods with high overlap are often large in quantity and volume, and it is very difficult to carry and transport.
3) Overlapping items between orders
If a wave summarizes many orders, and the overlap of important items of these orders is very low, there will be many idle trips and invalid actions during seeding operation, so the efficiency of using seeding sequencing in this wave will be very low.
4) Balance of order size
Order size refers to the number of items required in an order and the number of individual items. If there are a large number of orders in a wave, and there is a big gap between orders, it will cause problems such as delay in the completion time of large orders when using sowing sorting.
5) The need of classified sowing
In order to improve sorting efficiency? According to the different sorting characteristics, the orders are properly classified and combined, and different kinds of goods are planted and sorted in different ways. Therefore, the division requirements of classified sowing should also be considered when splitting waves.
6) Delivery and transportation requirements
For the goods in the same delivery route (or the same receiving area), it is usually necessary to arrange a wave of sorting, and the collection place is also set in one place, which is convenient to simplify the loading and delivery work and shorten the loading time.
7) Processing capacity of sorting system equipment
Due to the limitation of funds and space, the processing capacity of sorting equipment is always limited. We should also pay attention to this factor when splitting waves.
To sum up, in the wave division of order summary, we must take into account the above seven factors on the premise of summarizing multiple orders, rather than summarizing multiple orders.
Before picking, it was order picking. The traditional order picking path is long and the work efficiency is low.
After picking by wave: picking by wave according to the detailed commodity category, quantity and location in the order, that is, taking one or more details as the first sorting condition and commodity category as the second sorting condition, the order is processed by wave according to time or quantity, so as to optimize the work path of pickers, so that each picker can pick all commodities in a shorter time and improve efficiency.
The purpose of wave management is intensive picking, and the purpose of intensive picking has the following two considerations:
1) In order to improve picking efficiency and reduce picking routes.
2)? Sorting and picking, such as sorting orders from the same customer and sorting in the same shipping direction, will automatically complete tally and collection after picking, reducing tally and collection time.
If it is only to improve the picking efficiency, it may increase the tally cost; And just for the convenience of tally, it may increase the number of picking. Therefore, the actual application depends on the field situation to analyze.
In the traditional mode, when the quantity of goods in a location is less than the pre-warning quantity, the system automatically generates a replenishment order. Although the replenishment personnel can replenish the goods immediately, the efficiency is not high because of the high frequency.
After replenishment in batches: when the quantity of goods in a location is less than the warning quantity, the system will automatically generate a replenishment application instead of a replenishment order, and the WMS system will handle the replenishment task according to the set parameters such as quantity and time or manual intervention. Make the replenishment rhythm more reasonable, improve the overall efficiency and reduce the cost.
The return and exchange department handled the goods according to the order unit and failed to provide the arrival plan to the receiving department. The handling of goods is simple and rude, and the shelves in the warehouse have been handling a single goods, which is not conducive to picking goods, low efficiency and easy to make mistakes.
Wave return: after receiving a certain number of returns, wave processing is carried out according to the category and positive and negative products, and the arrival plan is made according to the waves. Receiving personnel calmly respond, improve efficiency, and place goods more centrally.
WMS wave management is not only widely used in picking, replenishment and return, but also includes routing, inventory, picking list, label printing, time period merging, picking by region, packaging wave and other applications, which greatly improves the operational efficiency of the warehouse.
Wave management of WMS system can analyze the data structure of orders and classify them according to the principle of priority.
With the help of intelligent strategies such as allocation rules and picking rules, the inventory of a large number of orders added to the wave is searched and sorted, and the dynamic priority allocation of inventory is carried out according to various rule engines to avoid the concurrency of inventory allocation and the redundancy of picking lines. After the allocation is completed, the wave execution results are output, corresponding rules are generated, and potential abnormal orders are excluded.
Using the rules in the order structure to control the picking rhythm through the number of times will bring about a qualitative improvement in picking.
For example, many orders have the same attribute characteristics, which can be combined to pick goods, or the whole box can be delivered out of the warehouse to improve efficiency.
Many orders have a high coincidence rate and can be sorted twice.
The rest of the scattered orders can be picked and divided.
Making full use of these situations to generate corresponding picking rules is helpful to improve picking efficiency.
After the order wave is successfully allocated, WMS will generate a picking list according to the picking rules, and users can query the corresponding picking task (picking list) and its picking details in the picking task to improve the operation efficiency.
The wave processing of picking tasks is beneficial to the rapid batch processing of orders, especially for promotion days.
Help enterprises avoid and deal with possible risks and problems and give full play to the subjective initiative of enterprises as managers.
Using the structural characteristics of different orders to classify orders can handle different business processes accordingly.
For example, by screening orders by address, the orders in the same area are processed in batches, which reduces the pressure on carriers to return to the transit center for sorting, thus bringing more effective carrier resources.
For example, you can choose different picking strategies for different types of orders. When the daily order quantity is small, some orders don't need to be arranged deliberately. When promoting, sorting can greatly improve work efficiency.
In a word, with the help of the "wave tube" function of WMS system and the blessing of hardware, we can achieve the purpose of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and we can safely spend every promotion day and enhance the customer's service experience.