Oracle Manifest Picking

Order Picking and Assembly

Once an order is received, the items on the order must be retrieved from the warehouse, assembled, and prepared for shipment. All these activities involve labor and the movement of goods. The work should be organized to provide the level of customer service required and at least cost.

There are several systems that can be used to organize the work, among which are the following:

1. Area system. The order picker circulates throughout the warehouse selecting the items on the order, much as a shopper would in a supermarket. The items are then taken to the shipping area for shipment. The order is self marshalling in that when the order picker is finished, the order is complete. This system is generally used in small warehouses where goods are stored in fixed locations.

2. Zone system. The warehouse is divided into zones, and order pickers work only in their own area. An order is divided up by zone, and each order picker selects those items in their zone and sends them to the marshalling area where the order is assembled for shipment. Each order is handled separately and leaves the zone before another is handled. Zones are usually established by grouping together related parts. Parts may be related because of the type of storage needed for them (for example, freezer storage) or because they are often ordered together.

A variation of the zone system is to have the order move to the next zone rather than to the marshalling area. By the time it exits the last zone, it is assembled for shipment.

3. Multi order system. This system is the same as the zone system except that rather than handling individual orders, a number of orders are gathered together and all the items divided by zone. The pickers then circulate through their area, collecting all the items required for that group of orders. The items are then sent to the marshalling area where they are sorted to individual orders for shipment.

The area system is simple to manage and control, but as the warehouse throughput and size increases, it becomes unwieldy. The zone systems break down the order filling process into a series of smaller areas that can be better managed individually. The multi order system is probably most suited to the situation in which there are many items or many small orders with few items.

Irrespective of system that you use in your warehouse, Manifest Picking allows a warehouse operator to pick multiple orders in one pass using a list of orders or pickslip numbers. Therefore manifest picking does require either a paper list of orders or shipping labels.

With Manifest Picking

• The operator builds a pick manifest at the start of picking operation by scanning multiple pickslip numbers or sales orders. 
• The operator picks the material for the orders using a set of interleaved pick tasks. This way more than one order can be simultaneously picked in a single pass of the pick zone. 
• Once all tasks from all orders are picked, operator either drops the picked LPNs or performs a "Pass" to the next zone. 

Benefits

• Reduced travel time 
•  Improvement in operator productivity. Eg. In a single sweep of the warehouse operator can even pick 10-20 orders.

Manifest Picking is similar to cluster picking. Both picking methodologies allow a batch of orders to be picked simultaneously but Manifest picking gives you much more control over what orders you want to pick. The pick operator can select what exact orders that he need to pick whereas in cluster picking it is system driven.