These colourful cogs represent the wide range of similar parts the company supplies. How to pick the right one every time?

The family built up their specialist parts distribution business over three generations. It supplies professional and amateur craftsmen.

Problem

Customers order from a catalogue of 150,000 products. The company stores them in various stockrooms.

The Microsoft Dynamics system was printing a huge pile of pick lists every morning. As the size of the pile increased so did number of the errors. Some pickers had problems matching products to the lists.

Most suppliers were barcoding parts their for their current products. However the company also stocked parts for previous products which were not barcoded.

The company intended to move to a larger warehouse. Meanwhile their storerooms had to be more productive.

Business goals

1. Increase productivity
2. Reduce error
3. Expand capacity of existing premises.

Next steps

1. Control stock from receipt to despatch
2. Process returns.

Solution

The company agree to relabel all locations with barcodes to enable pickers to find all products, barcoded or not. They ordered Android rugged handheld terminal and a Codetrack custom pick and packing system.

To handle the 2,500 categories of stock Codetrack has four pick processes. It breaks each order down into these processes. Codetrack downloads batches of orders for picking in areas without WiFi.

The screen shows the picker what to scan and what to enter. When the picks for an order are complete, Codetrack directs a packer to consolidate the items for despatch

System integration

Codetrack exchanges data with Microsoft Dynamics. It downloads Dynamics picklists and uploads results.

Results

The pilot phase indicates a productivity increase of 25%-50%. This means the company will be able to handle the growth it expects without moving to new premises.

There is a 'significant' reduction in non-barcoded stock errors.

PROCESS POINT SOLUTION

Problem 150,000 SKUs stored in different warehouses and picked in different ways.

ERP Microsoft Dynamics

Solution Pick product according to type, consolidate picks from different warehouses for packing and shipment

Company Turnover: £5-10 million. Employees: 25-50