Picking efficiency climbs 650% with WMS
By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 9/15/1999
If you've ordered parts in the past year from Zenith Electronics, you've gotten used to receiving them within 48 hours of placing your order. And if the truth be told, most of those 48 hours are travel time because your order is processed within minutes of your call.The difference between now and two or three years ago is a warehouse management system (WMS) at the company's Huntsville, Ala. distribution center.
Prior to implementing the WMS, orderpickers pulled 16 lines an hour. The number today is 120, a 650% increase. And although workers pull up to 30 orders at a time, shipping accuracy has increased from 95% to better than 99%. Inventory accuracy is 99% too, a significant increase from its 65% level earlier. The end result is Zenith has not missed a shipment commitment in well over a year.
In that time, the Huntsville facility has seen a 26% increase in business but a decline in the number of people needed to process orders. Before the WMS, there were 56 warehouse workers and now there are just 19.
And even with the smaller work force, order turnaround time is a vast improvement over the 4 days that used to be needed just to get an order out the door.
According to Reggie Bryant, director of logistics and distribution, "the WMS is the foundation for all of our improvements. We needed this technology in order to move forward."
Using wireless terminals, the WMS manages the warehouse functions from receiving through shipping, directing tasks in the most efficient manner. The system performs instant verification of operator entries and allows for correction of errors while the worker is still performing that task. This ensures accuracy and saves time in correcting errors. The distribution center now ships more than 7,000 orders a week.
The WMS is also linked to a UPS shipping system. Approximately two-thirds of all orders are shipped by UPS. Customer order information is directly transferred from the WMS to the UPS system which checks for address accuracy. In addition, the UPS system assigns the shipment the correct mode of transportation to ensure delivery within 48 hours of the order.
Majure Data
FACT FILE
Zenith Electronics
Huntsville, Ala.
Application: Electronic component distributor
Facility: Distribution center
Challenge: Pick, ship, and deliver orders within 48 hours of order receipt
Solution: Use a warehouse management system and wireless terminals
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