Studies suggest that warehouse pickers can spend over 70% of their time walking between racks as they travel through inefficient pick paths. In a world where time and money are practically interchangeable, non-productive tasks such as walking, waiting in line, and manual data entry can be extremely detrimental to enterprise success. Wasted time can delay order fulfillment, slowing down the supply chain, which could impact customer relationships and increase the potential for lost revenue.
As demands begin to accelerate towards the end of the year, CMAC has partnered with leading technology providers to outline five ways to accelerate fulfillment without damaging accuracy rates for a better customer experience.
- Simplify pick paths – The 80/20 rule indicates that 80% of your revenue stems from 20% of your inventory. Therefore, to make pick paths easier to follow, consider strategically placing high-demand goods throughout the warehouse in more accessible locations. Moreover, tracking technologies such as RFID locationing can pinpoint where your high-demand inventory is situated on a mobile interface, empowering pickers to quickly assemble orders with a birds-eye-view of available inventory.
- Implement cross-docking – Not everything that passes through the receiving dock has to be immediately stored. Cross-docking eliminates an unnecessary step while making sure incoming goods are readily available to ship again. To do this, we recommend equipping your workforce with dependable connectivity and mobile computing technology to monitor incoming shipments and orders before inventory is moved unnecessarily.
- Reduce manual processes – We all know that paper-based systems can leave much room for costly errors, but they also take up valuable time that could be spent on more crucial tasks. To reduce risks, CMAC recommends digitizing crucial interfaces like SAP. Software programs such as Synactive’s Liquid UI can connect directly to your WMS and ERP to accelerate data storing and reporting directly from your mobile device, ultimately reducing errors by 75%.
- Streamline data capture – At CMAC, innovation has no borders. To take data capture a step further, we recommend Zebra’s SimulScan application, which captures multiple barcodes with one trigger pull, drastically reducing processing time. Interestingly, RFID technology can also be used to streamline data capture as one tag can hold up to the equivalent of 40 codes and does not require line of sight to be scanned.
- Lower training times with user-friendly devices – Extensive and complex employee training can lead to wasted time and higher labor turnover rates. However, user-friendly platforms such as Android’s enterprise OS can decrease training times by housing crucial applications onto a familiar and intuitive platform. That’s why leading manufacturers like Zebra Technologies have made Android their OS of choice for their next-generation mobile devices. Working with a more user-friendly platform, employees can become productive faster, leaving more room for other crucial tasks.
When operations are running smoothly from production to storefront, everyone benefits. While accelerated order fulfillment is one way to accomplish this, there are many other optimization strategies you can create to match your workflow’s challenges. Contact us today to learn more and get a free demonstration of your preferred modernization solution.