Where to Turn When Full Pallet Picking Can’t Meet Your Warehouse’s Fulfillment Needs
In the supply chain, there are companies that deal with full pallets, and then there’s everybody else. Or at least, that’s what you might think looking at the warehouse equipment market and its heavy focus on pallet handling solutions. In reality, a huge proportion of warehousing businesses operate in a mixed environment where orders must be fulfilled in different unit ranges from full pallets down to individual units. Aside from full pallet picks, smaller volume picks don’t always get the attention they deserve, which is why we’d like to turn this article’s spotlight on the technologies and equipment that make small unit volume operations possible.
Across all types of warehousing operations, fulfillment strategies can be broken down into these four methods:
- Full Pallet Picking – this method describes fulfilling orders by picking complete pallets from storage, without breaking these pallets down into smaller units.
- Case Picking – for most warehoused products, full pallets are built out of multiple smaller cases or cartons. When an order calls for breaking out a number of cases from a complete pallet, this is referred to as case or carton picking. This is also sometimes called broken pallet picking.
- Split-Case Picking – when even fewer units are needed than a full case, warehouse staff will open a case to extract smaller packages or individual units from within, referred to as split-case picking. In many industries, split-case picking is also known as each picking or piece picking.
- Unit Picking – often used interchangeably with split-case picking, unit picking describes the process of picking out singular products from a larger container volume. Unit picking is a useful distinction for products that are not packaged into cases, requiring direct picking from a master container.
From the above pick strategies, you can gather that breaking into full pallets adds a bit of complication – handling partial pallets, keeping track of varying SKUs, and managing inventory, just to name a few. Pretty quickly, it becomes clear that fulfillment operations dealing with less-than-full pallet volumes need their own set of equipment solutions specifically designed for the nuances of individual unit handling. Luckily, there’s a whole world of such equipment available on the market, as we’ll see below.
Order Picking Technologies and their Ideal Applications
When full-pallet storage is not the right tool for the job, fulfillment centers can turn to one or more of these order picking solutions:
Industrial Shelving
As far as large-scale storage goes, industrial shelving is about as simple as it gets. Shelving systems are ideal for small, slow-moving products that are light enough in weight to be picked by hand. Industrial shelving is especially useful in narrow aisle, high reach warehouse designs where man-up lift trucks can be used.
Common Applications: retail, automotive, MRO (maintenance, repair, operations), education, electrical, machine tool, and consumer goods distribution.
High-Density Nested Cell Storage
Nested cellular storage is a unique storage system designed to fit in the space of a standard dual pallet racking bay, but with upwards of 40-60% more storage density within that space. High-density nested cell storage offers many more pick facings, greater SKU density, less seek time, and prominent product visibility for single product units or broken case volumes.
Common Applications: e-Commerce, clothing & apparel, donation, recreational product, and wholesale-to-consumer distribution.
Container Flow Racking
Also called Carton Flow Racking when manufacturers supply cases.
Container flow racking is constructed of roller or wheeled shelves where products are fed from the back and slide by gravity to the front. This design fills two particular needs: first, container flow racking drives FIFO (first in, first out) inventory management by presenting operators with the oldest products in the rack first, and second, it supports unit picking of loose parts staged in intermediate containers (or bins). Flow racking is also often used to separate work areas and feed order building stations.
Common Applications: on-the-line storage including around manufacturing and assembly lines, machining and tooling centers, packing and freight stations, electronics assembly areas, and kitting stations.
Vertical Lift Module
The best way to conceptualize a vertical lift module (VLM) system is to envision a tall set of shelves that mechanically brings products down to you at ground level instead of you needing to climb up to each shelf overhead. Vertical lift modules are automated storage solutions that hold high volumes of small parts within secured enclosures, boosting inventory protection, ergonomics, and space optimization all at once. They provide a “Goods-to-Person” (also known as Goods-to-Man) style of picking that can significantly reduce the time lost due to walking picking routes through a warehouse. This makes the picking function considerably easier and more efficient.
Common Applications: high-value product storage, machining and machine tool parts, MRO parts, electronics, rare earth components, and clean-room grade parts storage.
Portable High-Density Cell Storage
Similar in concept to the above High-Density Nested Cell Storage systems, these portable cell carts take per-unit picking to wherever in the warehouse it’s needed. Most businesses deploy portable cell carts for either batch order building (picking multiple orders at once) or lower-volume restocking functions, striving for increased flexibility and bulk transport of small-unit picks in both cases.
Common Applications: big-box retail, e-Commerce, in-store pickup, seasonal demands, returns management, and daily production station refilling operations.
Radio Frequency Pick Carts
Take all the benefits of the above portable high-density cell storage carts, add ultra-reliable networked automation capabilities, and you’ll now have a unique solution known as Radio Frequency (RF) Pick Carts. Using RF Pick Carts, staff members can bring their inventory, mission, navigation, and other digital systems with them on their pick routes. RF Carts use resilient radio frequency communications instead of standard industrial Wi-Fi, as RF comms tend to experience fewer connectivity issues than Wi-Fi at a lower cost.
Common Applications: e-Commerce, retail, hi-tech, electronics, food and drug, and wholesale distribution operations.
Pallet Flow Racking
Though pallet flow racking is built for – you guessed it – pallets, we’re mentioning it here in the context of case picking and split-case picking applications. When used in these scenarios, flow racking helps warehouses streamline their material flows in a FIFO fashion while also separating in- and out-bound traffic. Especially for high-velocity warehouses, flow racking allows staff to turn over case pick or split-case pick orders quickly without needing forklifts to swap out empty pallets.
Common Applications: perishable products distribution (food, beverage, pharmaceuticals), aging inventory management, and retail distribution.
Using Order Picking Systems to Drive Greater Overall Warehouse Performance
Any of the order picking solutions outlined above can deliver prime results when used to bring less-than-full pallet picking flexibility into a warehouse, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Implementing these technologies into a wider warehouse optimization strategy can unlock even greater performance gains, such as with these three examples:
- Balance Unit and Batch Picking – as a warehouse’s order makeup changes over time, order picking systems can be easily reconfigured to balance unit and batch picking for maximal efficiency. Warehouse managers should select order pick systems with sufficient “flex capacity” built into the design from the beginning (such as by specifying different storage cell sizes that can accommodate different sized goods).
- Implement Zone Picking – it’s not just what order pick systems are installed that leads to the greatest success, but how those systems are utilized once installed. Zone Picking is the next best method of extracting high velocity performance, assigning goods and staff to predetermined zones where mission speeds and accuracies can be maximized.
- Streamline Warehouse Traffic – with less-than-full pallet order pick systems, warehouses trade wasted space and handling labor for much greater selectivity, density, and inventory trackability. As a result, warehouse traffic can be further refined, cutting down on mid-mission travel times, idle periods, and transit distances. Best of all, streamlined traffic also improves warehouse safety and pedestrian protection.
We hope that this discussion has been helpful for your commercial material handling needs. Fairchild Equipment is the Upper Midwest’s premier Material Handling Equipment and Service resource ready 24/7 to serve your needs throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, northern Illinois and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For more information or to discuss which Warehouse Optimization solution might be best for you, please send our team a message or give us a call at (844) 432-4724.
