Whether it's customized picking, value-added services, or meeting tough service-level and order accuracy agreements, customer requirements are a fact of life.

Most facilities cope by adding labor and chalking it up to the price of doing business. That works fine when the volumes are low. But as volumes rise, along with the number of customer requirements, those additional labor costs can be the difference between making and losing money on a customer.

It doesn't have to be that way, says Tom Kozenski, vice president of product strategy for RedPrairie (877-733-7724, www.redprairie.com). When customer requirements are engineered into the workflow, they become a way for a business to differentiate itself from the competition. Done wrong, Kozenski adds, “You come to a grinding halt.”

Want to do it right? Here are five examples of how automated materials handling equipment, mobile computing and automatic data collection (AIDC) technologies, and warehouse management (WMS) and warehouse control (WCS) systems can work together to automate and manage some of the most common customer requirements.

To the sales team, landing an order with a big box retailer is a grand slam. To the DC that suddenly has to fill the orders, it's like facing a 100-mph fastball: Make one too many errors and you go down swinging. “One of our customers ships intimate apparel to Wal-Mart,” says Chris Castaldi, vice president of client development for AL Systems (800-548-3745, www.alsysinc.com). “They get one order each week to pack items in store-destined boxes for more than 3,000 stores.” In reality, that's like filling 3,000 orders for 25 to 200 garments. Since any errors can result in expensive charge backs, the DC has to be more accurate than ever.

The solution: Pick-to-light. When store orders are received in the WMS, the system produces a shipping label or an RFID smart label for each store. Those labels are applied to store-destined cartons that are scanned at the beginning of a picking zone. As the cartons pass down a conveyor, lights direct picking operations. To prevent errors, a percentage of the cartons are conveyed to a quality-assurance area. There, an operator scans the contents of a carton to catch any mistakes. Since the system knows who filled each carton, it can identify an operator making repeated errors for further training. The remaining cartons are sealed and palletized for delivery to a DC, where they will be crossdocked for store delivery.

With low-cost sourcing, today's supply chain is more complicated than ever, says Patti Satterfield, vice president of marketing and business development for Fortna (800-367-8621, www.fortna.com). “The requirement is synchronizing inventory information across a supply chain that might be 10,000 miles long and involve ocean lines, freight forwarders and other transportation modes before it even gets to a distribution center,” says Satterfield. Large manufacturers doing business with larger retailers can enable that communication with electronic data interchange (EDI). But EDI can be too expensive for small suppliers and transportation providers.

The solution: An Internet-enabled portal and collaboration platform. “If you use a Web-enabled system, anyone with access to a PC and the Internet can access the same shared system for trading partner communication,” says Satterfield.

While automatic data collection, like bar code scanning, can streamline the process, small suppliers can manually enter data. In addition to advanced ship notifications, leading companies are adding event management functionality that alerts them when user-defined events take place. “A retailer may want to be alerted when an order isn't progressing according to their time frame so they can plan for contingencies if something goes wrong,” says Satterfield.

Manufacturers making cereal may set up and run the same product for several shifts at a time. Computer, car and window manufacturers, on the other hand, are building customized products. For them, having the components or raw materials delivered in the same sequence as the unique items are being built is a customer requirement. “Think build-to-order,” says RedPrairie's Kozenski. “If you're a supplier, you're reacting to a demand signal that tells you the bill of materials for the product coming down the line and the sequence of the parts to be picked.”

The solution: WMS-directed picking and verification. In this instance, a WMS works in conjunction with a voice recognition system or a bar code scanning system to direct picking to a tote, rack or cart. “If I'm picking the grills for a car, I'll be directed to put a green grill in slot 1 or a black one in slot 4 and so on,” says Kozenski. “Since accuracy is important, the system will direct the picker to confirm that the slots are right.”

If the item is serialized, like an air bag or an engine block, the system can capture serial numbers at the sequencing center, which saves time at the assembly line. In addition, the system provides visibility against the production run. If you're running behind schedule, the system will alert you to send out a partially loaded truck so you can meet service level requirements.

High-volume retailers require a variety of labels for every shipment. “A major big box retailer may require a compliance label on a carton if you're shipping directly to a store for inventory replenishment,” says Dan Hanrahan, president of Numina Group (630-343-2600, www.numinagroup.com). “You may also need a label that identifies the inventory in that carton, a license plate bar code on a pallet, and a shipping label with the tracking number and ship-to information.”

For a small customer getting a few hundred cartons a day, those labels can be applied by hand. “When you're applying 1,000 or more labels a day, automating can lead to real labor savings,” says Hanrahan.

The solution: Automated print-and-apply. After a carton is picked and packed, a license plate bar code associated with the order is applied to the carton. As it travels by conveyor, it's sorted to the labeling automation system. First, an inline scale captures the weight and dimensions of the carton or package. That information is used to validate the weight of the carton and is sent to a shipping manifest software module that determines the best way to ship the item.

At the first printer, a packing slip with the customer's order information is printed and applied to the top of the carton. At the next printer, a shipping label is applied over top of the packing slip. From there, the carton is conveyed to the shipping sorter. “By waiting until the end of the process to apply the labels, a customer can change an order right up until a carton goes on the truck,” says Hanrahan.

For companies selling directly to consumers, the ability to personalize products before shipment is a differentiator. Take a company in the direct-selling industry whose products are sold by consultants to consumers in their homes. “Consultants not only need all the items they have ordered, but they need an order sheet for each of the consultant's customers, says Jerry List, vice president of QC Software (513-469-1424, www.qcsoftware.com). What's more, List adds, each order may require additional documentation, like certificates of authenticity or warranties. “A lot of that personalization happens at the pack out station,” says List.

The solution: A warehouse control system. One of QC Software's direct-selling customers created two packing lines: One for small orders that can be quickly packed out without creating bottlenecks and another for larger orders requiring additional documentation. “In this case, orders come down to the warehouse control system,” List says. “It knows from the WMS where inventory is located, and dynamically determines the best picks to balance the workload on the line in real-time.”

Once items have been picked to cartons, the WCS sorts them to a packing station. There, a bar code label on the carton is automatically scanned, which generates a list of value-added items for the operator to add to the carton. “Often, those items may be in a pick-to-light area, which directs the picking process,” List adds. Once the documentation has been added to the carton, it's sealed and sorted to the shipping area, where compliant labeling and any shipping labels are applied.