Warehouse automation technologies are rapidly advancing, and this is especially true of Numina’s RDS™ warehouse order orchestration software platform.

“The RDS warehouse order orchestration platform yields a dramatic competitive advantage for today’s companies managing complex order fulfillment requirements, robotics, material handling equipment, and labor requirements,” said Dan Hanrahan, CEO and Founder of Numina Group.

The RDS WES-WCS Orchestration Platform uses AI and advanced logic to better manage and optimize many workflows across the fulfillment operation. It enables companies to unite processes, people, and material handling technologies into a single solution that provides up-to-the-minute operation performance and order throughput visibility.

RDS Warehouse Order Orchestration goes far beyond traditional warehouse execution and control solutions to provide superior batch, wave, or continuous order release methods with intelligence-driven automation to truly optimize order fulfillment. The solution supports a wide variety of workflow tasks such as put-away, replenishment, picking, order consolidation, cycle counting, ship sortation, and pallet building with RDS Victory Voice™.

RDS Order Orchestration is the latest in Numina Group’s ongoing commitment to deliver advanced, best practice solutions that reduce fulfillment labor costs by 50% or more while increasing accuracy and order per day throughput.

On average, warehouse operators walk about 10 miles a day, or 2,400 miles a year. In discrete picking operations, in which orders are individually picked, this often means returning to the same bin location dozens of times for each order every few hours.

How much productivity can you gain by eliminating redundant tasks and enabling workers to pick multiple orders simultaneously in the optimal pick path?

Order release planning software, such as Numina’s RDS™ Order Release Module, increases picking productivity across the entire distribution center (DC). RDS includes algorithms to select orders based on several variables to more efficiently balance work, modeled on historic picking performance and real-time metrics of the DC’s zone picking performance. 

Optimized Batch Picking

RDS considers picking tasks and travel time in each zone to synchronize the batch wave picking completion time across the DC.

Numina’s batch-picking module, RDS™ BatchBot™, combines the power order release software with autonomous mobile robots working alongside employees. BatchBot provides many benefits, such as:

• Eliminates Repetitive Walking: By selecting a group of orders with like items to pick at once, ten or more orders at a time, employees reduce repetitive visits to the storage bin to once or twice per hour.
• Significantly Reduces Labor Costs: Batch picking rates are 2X faster than discrete picking rates when operators are accurately directed by technology to pick multiple items at a time into cartons or totes and validate tasks with barcode scanning.
• Increases Productivity: Batch picking results in faster fulfillment. More orders are completed/hour at a lower labor cost/hour.

This wave-based batch-picking capability increases picking density, speed, and productivity throughout the order fulfillment operation, which is why many facilities are adopting this strategy to streamline the order fulfillment operation.

Result: RDS Batchbot, combined with RDS order release planning and voice technology, can double picking productivity, without adding staff.

These process improvement efficiency gains are eclipsed by the results achieved when technology is deployed to replace manual processes. An end-to-end, fully integrated warehouse automation system can double or triple warehouse productivity, dramatically reduce labor costs and ensure the company is well-positioned to absorb sudden increases in order volume.

For example, in a traditional warehouse environment, paper-based picking workers have pick rates between 60 – 100 picks per hour. Workers’ pick rates typically increase by 70% or more when paper-based picking is replaced with voice-picking technology.

When several Numina clients have deployed voice picking in high-velocity, properly SKU-slotted pick zones, they have increased workers’ pick rates to 230 – 300 lines per hour. They were also able to reduce seasonal labor and annual overtime costs.

Benefits like these are achievable and have been the experience of many Numina customers. However, getting there requires planning – including a detailed audit of the company’s current operations, yielding an end-to-end warehouse automation design plan that will guide the right combination of warehouse technologies.

Learn more about Numina’s Warehouse Automation Design Services.

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Manual order processing productivity can be improved by analyzing workflow, eliminating redundant tasks, and reducing the touches made by workers to process an order – but only to a point.

These efficiency gains are eclipsed by the efficiency gains achieved with technology. Tools such as voice picking technology, mobile robots, inline scan-weigh-dim systems, print-and-apply, and more, managed by a warehouse automation platform, can optimize and accelerate all areas of order picking, packing, and shipping.

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Is your warehouse operation ready to meet the diverse requirements of multichannel fulfillment? Today’s customers have fully embraced the benefits of multichannel or omnichannel shopping.

According to a study by Digital Commerce 360, “Retail chains in the Top 500 in 2023 reflect a consumer more comfortable returning to in-store shopping while leveraging online buying capabilities. BOPIS, which stands for Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store, for retail chains in the Top 500, reached 82.7% penetration in 2023, up from 76.3% in 2022.”¹

6. Conduct Preventive Equipment Maintenance and Audit Spare Parts Inventory

Value stream mapping is the process of creating a comprehensive visual representation of an organization’s operation.

Learn about Numina’s Warehouse Design Services

Begin by creating a value stream map (VSM) of your warehouse processes and a detailed slotting study that focuses on the flow of goods and information from supplier to customer. This will help you visualize and understand the current state of your order fulfillment operations and identify areas for improvement. 

Value Stream mapping begins by asking two questions, “what adds value to customers?” and “What steps can be eliminated or combined into a single step?” 

It is a discovery exercise that creates a flowchart of all the steps and touches that take place to fulfill orders today. It also identifies which steps add value and which are wasted.

The goal should be to eliminate as much of the waste components as possible throughout your entire order fulfillment process.

The first generation of robotics goods-to-person automation systems was developed by a firm called Kiva Systems.

Kiva was the first company to deploy a goods-to-person solution that included autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to move inventory storage shelves from dense storage areas directly to operators at stationary order picking stations. This technology dramatically reduced operator walk time and eliminated unnecessary steps to reduce labor and increase order picking speed.

Kiva System’s pioneering use of AMR-based goods-to-person solutions for product storage and picking, was proven to improve operator picking performance especially for less-than-case item B2B and e-commerce order fulfillment. However, Kiva Systems  was acquired by Amazon in 2012 which halted the sales of its G2P solution other companies.

Over the next few years, firms such as Geekplus, Addverb and others rapidly filled the void left by Kiva, bringing higher performance, next-generation robotic goods-to-person AMRs to the warehouse automation market.

The speed and efficiency of the goods-to-person technology have accelerated far beyond the first generation of Kiva Systems incorporating advanced AMR robotics.

These companies’ goods-to-person automation solutions are becoming the de facto standard for inventory storage and order picking in warehouse and distribution centers around the world. 

Current AMR technology solutions include advancements in navigation and safety such as Lidar and vision-based guidance, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to improve speed, efficiency, and accuracy of storage and picking.

As e-commerce continues to grow and customers’ expectations continue to rise, goods-to-person automation will likely play an even more critical role in warehouse operations in the years to come. 

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Solution: RDS Warehouse Automation Solutions

Blog: Cost and Performance Benefits Offered by the Latest G2P Warehouse Robot Solutions

Our Pakt line was continuously running, we provided Victory Voice picking demos and a contingent of warehouse automation experts on hand to educate visitors on how RDS WES-WCS can transform your e-commerce fulfillment and distribution operations.

Numina Group, a leading independent systems integrator for over 35 years, continuously strives to provide cutting-edge solutions for clients. Warehouse automation software and technologies are rapidly advancing; this is especially true of our latest software automation components, that form the foundation of the RDS™ WES-WCS platform.

Victory Voice Picking Suite is an excellent example of modular automation. It includes all the order-picking tools required for any size omnichannel, E-Com, or B2B distribution operation.

Additionally, it seamlessly connects with Pakt™ to unite automated pick, with pack and ship components, much like Software “Lego Blocks”.

Numina Group’s approach to warehouse automation is to repeatably deliver best practice solutions that reduce client’s order fulfillment labor costs by 50% or more while increasing accuracy and order per day throughput.

Cartonization software offers savings benefits by optimizing and automating decisions made around the actual packing of an order into the ideal carton size. Numina’s RDS Cartonization software eliminates manual decision-making by directing the workers to choose the recommended package type. It also optimizes the process by eliminating interruptions and ensuring 100% compliance with the lowest-cost shipping rules.  

However, Numina’s RDS Cartonization software combined with the RDS Order Release software, yields further savings through efficiency gains on the operations floor.  

When these solutions are integrated, the system not only recommends package type, it also analyzes the order release plan to create the most efficient picking process and path. For example: 

• The order release software will organize picking so that operators pick items for several orders from a zone rather than picking just one order at a time. The picking path is also optimized to reduce unnecessary steps, reduce labor, and shorten pick times.

  Video: Customer Green Rabbit Shows RDS Order Release Software in Action 

• The order release software will also analyze and balance the workload across all the pack and ship stations to keep orders moving. Suppose the operation includes multiple packing stations to accommodate different pack requirements. In that case, it will perform load balancing to keep all stations active and prevent overloading or idle time at any specific station. 

Watch Numina’s Order Release Video