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Companies today have access to a plethora of technologies for automating and streamlining warehouse operations. So much so, that it is sometimes easy to overlook how a lean simple technology can be combined with other technologies to impact daily labor savings while returning a huge efficiency boost in manufacturing and warehouse operations. That device? The mobile battery-powered cart!
Mobile Workstations Move Technology to Where the Work is Performed
Mobile batteries have come a long way in the last 18 months. As the power density of Lithium-ion batteries goes up, the price and recharge cycle time have gone down.
A mobile-powered cart equipped with a scale, presentation barcode scanner, Zebra label printer, and laser printer can last ten or more hours without recharging.
This frees up employees from wasted travel time by bringing the technology to the warehouse area where the work is performed.
A mobile-powered workstation or a batch order picking cart can eliminate pre-printing batches of order and shipping labels and picking and packing sheets. Weight check scales and dimensioners can be added to the station to perform order fulfillment tasks faster, more efficiently, and accurately.
Powered carts eliminate wasted walking time and save the operator from having to sort batches of pre-printed pick sheets or work instruction documents by changing the process to on-demand printing. Productivity is improved, unnecessary operator steps are eliminated, errors are reduced, and orders are processed faster through an inexpensive investment.
Four Ways to Leverage Mobile Carts in Warehouse Operations
This two-part blog will explore four very effective uses for the mobile powered cart in optimizing warehouse operations, where mobile powered carts are driving a fast ROI by increasing operational efficiency:
Mobile receiving workstation
Mobile batch cart for high-volume small-item piece picking
Mobile shipping and manifesting workstation
Mobile pallet labeling and wrapper station
Replace fixed receiving workstations with a battery-powered mobile workstation, loaded with Numina’s warehouse execution and control software (WES/WCS), a bar code scanner, Zebra label printer and a mobile dimensioning scale and vision capture system.
If many warehouse facilities, workers need to walk to a stationary printer to retrieve the labels needed for an incoming shipment. This not only creates waste from unnecessary steps, but often results in less accuracy in receiving. Instead, a mobile cart can be moved to the receiving dock door or pallet to validate the entire receiving process by:
Scanning or entering the incoming order to verify the product and quantity.
Capturing case and each product weight, dimensional measurements, and sending the image to the ERP/WMS.
Capturing and recording errors or damaged goods with a time-stamped image of the errors to reduce costs for processing claims
Generating a barcoded label for the received pallet to direct put away to the storage location
Increases accuracy by eliminating manual processes such as item look up and keying of data.
Reduces costly walking to and from static printers by 50%.
Increases labeling accuracy to 90+% by printing and applying directly at pallet.
Reduces lost staff time due to walking inbound shipments to a fixed receiving station.
Immediately validates that product received from suppliers is correct (even if packaging has changed).
Enables you to safely move expensive equipment – such as a dimensioning system – to where it is needed, increasing utilization across multiple doors.
Provides flexibility to move receiving operations as space utilization needs change.
Mobile powered batch carts combined with Numina’s voice-directed picking solution accelerate and improve speed and accuracy in piece part counting.
The cart is equipped with a scale and printer managed by Numina’s WES/WCS RDS™ Voice Picking Suite.
Example: 30% Productivity Boost
For example, at a leading automotive parts and assembly kit supplier, the combined technologies on the powered batch pick cart direct the manufacturing kitting and order pick applications, driving a 30% productivity boost compared to the former processes.
Voice picking has several advantages, including directing the operators in an optimized travel path with voice commands and hands-free barcode scanning, replacing reading work instructions from paper, or a mobile RF terminal.
Barcode scanning, using a mobile scanner, verifies the location and item and quantity picked. This results in efficient, hands-free, eyes-focused picking and pack operations process, improving overall performance by 30% with an accuracy rate of 99.9%.
Efficiently Pick Multiple Orders At a Time
Adding a powered batch cart that can be used to pick 12 or more orders simultaneously that includes a high-precision counting scale and Zebra label printer on the cart speeds up the entire operation, especially when orders contain multi-piece loose parts of 30 to 200 or more counts of washers, screws, bolts and other components.
Voice directs the pick validation, and the piece weight scale performs the count validation.
Combined Small Item Piece Picking Technology Process:
The scale transmits the weight/piece count message to RDS™ Software
RDS tells the printer to print a product order identifier label
Voice commands direct the operator to apply the label and seal the bagged components
Voice commands direct the operator to place the bag into the right order carton or tote
Integrating the scale and labeling on the powered cart with the latest power source technology allows picking to operate over the two shift order fulfillment operation with only a few charges performed during work breaks.
Combines pick and pack into a single process, eliminating secondary touches in packing and QC.
Loose piece items are weighed, counted, bagged and an order-specific label is printed at piece count validation.
Increases throughput by eliminating the need for operators to move products to a central scale station, perform piece counting, and return the product back to the primary storage location.
Operations happen in real-time with product and quantity picked data updated to the ERP/WMS to adjust location inventory records.
Reduces staff walk time by up to 50%.
Eliminates the possible error of returning product to the wrong location.
Provides 99.9% accuracy by validating that the correct items and quantities are picked for every order.
Combining voice-directed picking and mobile-powered carts allows for fulfillment of products that require additional labeling such as small medical devices that require additional compliance labels on every piece.
In many cases, staff can manage the labeling with wearable printers, but a mobile picking cart offers additional versatility. It is a matter of simply adding another printer to the cart and re-purposing it for other types of picking.
These examples illustrate just a few of the ways mobility delivers measurable improvements in efficiency and accuracy for manufacturing and warehouse operations. Mobile powered carts are highly effective in helping companies make better use of their existing warehouse space.
Mobile power carts make it possible for workers to use technology where and when it is needed – resulting in a more efficient work force and operation.
Please check out our next blog for more tips about how adding mobile-powered carts to your DC can streamline pallet labeling and exception manifesting processes.
Coming in Part II: Faster Shipping, Manifesting, Outgoing Pallet Handling and Prep
The Numina Group
10331 Werch Drive
Woodridge, IL 60517
630-343-2600
How the Right Warehouse Automation Decisions Can Solve Your Labor Woes As the economy roars
The Numina Group
10331 Werch Drive
Woodridge, IL 60517
630-343-2600
