UNEX Manufacturing Graduates Over 15 Partners from UNEX University

UNEX Manufacturing, Inc., the trusted industry leader in providing innovative order picking solutions, announces that over fifteen distributor partners graduated from an intensive, two-day course called UNEX University. UNEX professionals passed on their knowledge of the material handling industry, the issues and challenges facing businesses in this sector, and how UNEX solutions could help solve these problems with state-of-the-art order picking and conveying systems.

“We value our distributor partners and want to share best practices and industry insights with them to help them grow their business with UNEX solutions,” said Brian C. Neuwirth, VP Marketing and Sales at UNEX Manufacturing. “The two-day agenda covered everything UNEX – describing where UNEX participates in the supply chain ecosystem, introduction to order picking and applications, and technical information on UNEX products. By the end of this training, the partners will be ready to become Masters of Pickology themselves.”

The attending distributors broke off into small groups, led by UNEX outside sales managers, to work their way through a typical carton flow application. This included measuring rack, assessing the product being flowed, designing a carton flow solution to fit the hypothetical customers’ needs, and creating a quotation for the solution. These workshops were designed to help distributors identify opportunities for UNEX solutions and give them the information they need to put together a complete proposal.

“UNEX University is all empowerment,” said Neuwirth. “We would not be the company we are today without the excellent work done by our partners in the past. By providing them with an in-depth education on all things UNEX, we strengthen those existing relationships and better prepare our partners to strike out on their own and find great opportunities to put our solutions to work.”

The technical data portion of the seminar served a similar purpose, and helped distributors understand what measurements and data are most important when discussing UNEX solutions with potential customers. Other workshops on Lean Manufacturing, Assembly and Proving ROI were included. The distributors were also given a presentation on marketing, which taught them how UNEX and these partners can work together to grow their businesses.

The post UNEX Manufacturing Graduates Over 15 Partners from UNEX University appeared first on Unex.

source http://www.unex.com/unex-university

Order Picking Methods: Which Is Best For You?

Order picking is one of the most costly- and essential- operations for your business.

With greater volumes of e-commerce orders generated with smaller quantities of items, order picking operation costs are on the rise. A variety of picking methods are used to fulfill customer orders. Whichever method is chosen typically depends of the type of products picked, amount of items in an order, travel time and distance required for fulfillment and availability of picking labor.

Piece or Parts Picking: This is a simple method of a single order picker picking items for a single order. Pickers select each item according to their pick list and place it in a container for shipping to the customer. This method is appropriate for odd-sized or oversized products; even items that may require special handling. Pickers walk many steps a day to pick this type of orders. Picking rates depend on the size of the orders and the amount of travel time.

Zone Picking: Order pickers are assigned to one specific zone to pick within, filling orders with the SKUs located in that area. If the order requires SKUs from another zone, the container is passed to another zone picker(s) for completion. The advantage of this method of picking is that workers are very familiar with items in their zones, which are of a limited size, allowing them to pick faster. Products are typically stored in flow racks or shelving.

Batch Picking: Also known as multi-order picking, this method is characterized by combining product demand from multiple orders into one pick instruction. Orders are arranged in efficient picking sequences. After order picking, goods are sorted/consolidated by order or shipping destination. Batch picking is useful for small items and only a few SKUs per order. It is most commonly used for food, non-food, apparel and ecommerce orders.

Cluster Picking: One SKU is picked to multiple orders or multiple SKUs to one order to a single picker. Pickers select items for multiple orders at one time, placing them into totes or containers, typically located on top of a mobile cart. Often technology like pick-to-light or pick-to-voice solutions guide pickers to the right products, speeding fulfillment and improving accuracy. Pickers pick orders in their entirety before proceeding to pick the next cluster of orders.

Wave Picking: One picker picks one order, one SKU at a time, but orders are scheduled to be picked at certain times of the day, in a specific wave to maximize the picking and packing operations. Wave picking is used when there are a large number of SKUs to pick from. A WMS releases the waves to the warehouse sequentially throughout the day, to allow managers to coordinate parallel and sequential activities such as planned departure times of shipping vehicles or production schedules.

Zone-Batch Picking: The method combines zone and batch picking where the picker is assigned a zone but can also be directed to batch pick within this zone. Multiple pickers can each pick portions of multiple orders.

Zone-Wave Picking: Zone-Wave Picking is a combination of methods in that pickers are assigned a zone and each picker within their zone picks all of the SKUs for all orders that are stocked in their zone, one order at a time with one scheduling window per shift.

Zone-Batch-Wave Picking: This type of picking combines all three methods: zone, batch and wave. Each picker is assigned a zone and picks all SKUs for orders stocked in the assigned zone.  Additionally, the picker picks more than one SKU at a time and there are multiple scheduling windows per shift.

The goal of any picking process is to reduce the number of touches per item; ideally it should be one touch. Improving efficiencies within the order picking process leads to customer satisfaction and bottom line profitability.

Not sure which picking method to use? Your Pickologists at UNEX Manufacturing can help you decide what method to employ and can provide the order picking solutions for each method. From flow racks to mobile workstations, UNEX has everything you need to speed your picking operations.

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source http://www.unex.com/order-picking-methods

Spring Cleaning Your Order Picking Operation

As spring quickly approaches, many of us will be tidying up our desks, throwing out old paperwork, and preparing our workspaces for the new season. Will you be doing the same in your order picking operation?

Piles and piles of inventory can be a real pain when trying to find products to fulfill orders- this is especially true of order picking operations where seasonal products are rotated in and out as the months go by. If your warehouse looks like a big mess, or just needs a little organization, the most important thing to do is to just start organizing – it can seem to be an overwhelming task, but once your warehouse is organized, you will notice the improvement in efficiency and productivity in order picking.

Organize your warehouse by what works best for your business – either stocking materials by products that sell quicker than others or by groups of products most frequently sold together or by seasonal items. As your product mix will probably change over the years, plan your storage needs based on current and future order picking needs, taking into account your projected growth.

First, throw away empty boxes and packing materials to clear aisles and shelves. When new boxes come in the door, either throw them away immediately, recycle them or move them to an area where they can be reused. Not only will you free up valuable space, you’ll make your order picking and storage workspaces much safer for your workers.

Implement a “handle once plan” – try to handle things just once, instead of moving an item from one location to another, then moving it somewhere else before picking it. Instead, organize items on storage racks, and label the shelves so you know what items are located. Assign products that belong within the same categories to a specific shelving area or aisle and label them. Make sure you put the same items in the same shelves each time so that pickers can better remember where things are located.

Racks within a warehouse enable businesses to maximize their use of space and to organize products efficiently while facilitating order picking operations. But, you can’t just start throwing pallet racks up in your warehouse without having some type of plan and layout. Consideration needs to be taken for shipping and receiving areas, staging areas, assembly and/or production work cells and aisle width. Use your “spring cleaning” time to re-evaluate your use of racking and how you can optimize it for your order picking processes.

You should also use this time to evaluate whether you’re utilizing the proper storage medium. Standard pallet racking systems can be used if you store large pallets of varying, medium-to-large goods, but carton flow racking is better for small or individual parts, in most cases. Using modular racks that can scale to fit your warehouse configuration minimizes wasted space. Plus, if you use racks that can be easily adjusted to product mix changes, you can just reconfigure the racks and use them with different products, saving money.

UNEX is a one-stop shop for all your order picking and storage needs, offering portable or stationary racks that maximize space utilization – and best of all, can grow as your business does. Our Pickologists have organized warehouses from new builds to well-established facilities. Our expertise will help you maximize your warehouse space for optimal storage to help you be better organized, so you can meet your demanding customer service requirements.

The post Spring Cleaning Your Order Picking Operation appeared first on Unex.

source http://www.unex.com/order-picking-spring-cleaning