Conceiving and organizing your warehouse with the help of
The PikXTRA method ails at improving your order picking performance, based on optimization calculations for placing your products in your picking area (slotting/mapping).
Even when your WMS can optimize picking routes, distances will remain long if your products are not placed well.
On the other hand, slotting will be more effective if your warehouse design takes into account a number of factors allowing for efficient operations.
This document provides a number of key elements for conceiving and organizing a warehouse of +/- 30 000m².
Building dimensions
Reminder: we are conceiving a building of +/- 30 000m².
Try to obtain a lay-out which allows for aisles about 100m long.
In that case, you would obtain a construction, around 200m long and 150m deep.
Less depth would mean shorter aisles, thus (potentially) allow for shorter picking distances.
The counterpart would consist of a wider building, this increasing driving distances to and from the ramps. In warehouses with high level of activity, this would increase activity on the ramps, thus representing an increased risk for traffic congestion and accidents.
Racking Configuration
Let us consider 4 racking configurations and their impact on order picking distance. In our example, we measure distance for an order containing 12 lines.
Case 1 : Racking without perpendicular aisle.
Case 3 : One off-centered aisle.
Case 2 : One perpendicular aisle in the center.
Case 4 : Two perpendicular aisles.
It is to be observed that racking configuration has a impact on order picking distances!
- Case 1 : 600 meters
- Case 2 : 500 meters (-16%)
- Case 3 : 460 meters (-23%)
- Case 4 : 400 meters (-33%)
Of course, racking configuration is a prerequisite for reducing order picking distances. Once this has been achieved, it is mandatory to establish an adapted slotting in order full benefit of your configuration.