Waytek boosts productivity with picking and consolidation strategies

An electrical parts distributor based in Chanhassen, Minn., Waytek expanded its order processing capacity by 66% without increasing labor. The boost was achieved by altering the order picking and consolidation strategies. The distributor reduced its order fulfillment floorspace and yielded an order line accuracy rate that exceeded 99.9%—without requiring a full audit of the order contents.

Each of these initiatives were critical for Waytek, since it strives to provide customer experiences that exceed expectations. A majority of its orders will ship within two hours of receipt and most will ship on the same day. However, with a rapidly increasing order volume, Waytek needed a substantial increase in its order fulfillment throughput to continue to meet its shipping goals.

Waytek’s SKUs are stored in distinct zones, according to SKU type, size and additional handling processes, such as counting, weighing, bagging small parts, cutting cables to ordered lengths and stripping insulation. Larger SKUs are stored on bay shelves or bins, while small parts are stored in four horizontal carousels. Individual orders typically require SKUs from multiple zones, including carousels.

In Waytek’s original order fulfillment strategy, the items required for an order were retrieved by dispatching totes to each zone that contained necessary items, picking the required items one order at a time and placing the totes on a conveyor that buffered them prior to consolidation. When all totes required for a given order were present on the conveyor, the totes were diverted to a packing station where items were removed from the totes and packed into cartons for shipment.

However, the conveyor sortation system would be unable to keep pace with growing order volume. And the system would sometimes deadlock when the sortation conveyor became filled, but no totes could be removed since some of the totes required for an order weren’t present.

After evaluating alternative approaches to increasing throughput, Waytek decided to replace its order picking strategy and sortation conveyor with a bulk-picking strategy that employed three putwalls for order consolidation. The putwalls enable required SKUs for multiple orders to be gathered in bulk from several picking zones and carousels, prior to being sorted into putwall compartments.

In addition, the putwalls use multicolored LED strips for highlighting put locations. By using multicolored LED strips, putwall compartment sizes can be rapidly reconfigured and multiple workers can work concurrently at the same putwall.

Meanwhile, bulk picking provides opportunities to optimize picking by gathering SKUs for numerous orders with a single trip through the picking area. Bulk picking improves the efficiency of the carousels, and only a single access of a carousel is required to gather all necessary SKUs, reducing waiting time for carousel rotations and significantly decreasing picking time.

Capable of exceeding 200 orders per hour, the new order fulfillment strategy didn’t require any additional labor. The putwall system is easy to learn, use and maintain—and was installed in one week. The system provides a scalable means to accommodate future growth by expanding the number of putwalls as needed. As a result of its offerings, the system’s ROI payback period was less than 12 months.

FastFetch Corporation
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