From Order… to Pick…  to Customer

 

 

You know all the specifications of your product – check.  You know the daily and even monthly breakdown of your order profile – check.  So what’s next in the process of designing a conveyor system unique to your business and your product lines?  In this 3^rd installment of our four-part blog series on conveyor system design and applications, we examine the warehouse layout…the path of the product, if you will, in order to ultimately identify the areas where conveyor applications make the most sense.

The Product  Specs:

• The maximum, minimum and average dimensions of the products
• The maximum weight of the product
• The properties of the product: fragile? Is it conveyable? Does it need to maintain a certain temperature?
• Bar code location

The Order Profile:

• Orders per day
• Line items per order
• Units per SKU
• Order type – each pick, carton or full pallet

Armed with the above information, your storage and conveyor system layout starts to take shape.  Critical to the conveyor design is the location, type and number of pick slots and storage bays, i.e. how and where is the product picked?

Pick Data:

• Carton flow velocity of each and case picks
• Rate of full carton picks from push-back, pallet flow and pallet rack

Now what about the building size? Floor to ceiling height, number of floor levels, door locations for entry and exit of product and full dock specifications will all be used in a custom layout design.  Your conveyor system starts at the pick slot and ends at the shipping destination. For example: envelopes and individual cases ship via parcel freight (UPS/FedEx) or can be routed to palletizing stations to ship out LTL from the dock. Your conveyor path now takes shape as all product characteristics are defined, from pick to shipping. Stay tuned for our next blog focusing on sortation.

Let our conveyor specialist help you define your requirements for the best-fit conveyor solution for your operation.

Contact E-Distribution to arrange a personal audit.
info@e-dist.com or (866) 690-4585.