Slot-LE An Expert Warehouse Slotting System
Slotting a warehouse properly can reduce costs in a number of operational areas. Some of the areas of cost savings can conflict with other areas of savings making it difficult to determine the proper balance to maximize savings. Slot-LE is a revolutionary slotting product that concentrates on maximizing savings in all areas affected by slotting. Slot-LE is categorized as an ‘expert system’ in that it is parameter / data driven and it’s answers are based upon the actual circumstances surrounding the slotting. These ‘circumstances’ include the order database, cost of labor, types of technology available etc. The majority of warehouse operations contain numerous technologies aimed at cost effective order fulfillment. In order to be effective at slotting your warehouse and to maximize center savings, the following costs must be considered:
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Storage Cost – Most often you are paying an annual square footage cost for the building. Depending on the effectiveness of your storage medium, you will experience various levels of cost to store parts in your technologies. An example of this might be high-rise racking narrow aisle vs. say 7 foot static shelving. The high-rise racking would be far more efficient in its ability to store product.
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Picking Cost – Order fulfillment comes in many different flavors. You may pick certain products by eaches, cases, or event pallet loads. Depending on the technology used, you will experience a wide variance in labor and costs. It may cost only 7 cents to pick a line from light directed flow rack, but it may cost 35 cents to pick that same line from a distant rack location. When you make the decision to pick eaches in a separate pick area, you need to make certain the gains you receive outweigh the additional costs (such as replenish- ment and storage). Even within a zone of technology it may be more efficient to pick an item in an easy to find location rather than one that is further away. This would hold true for shelf levels as well.
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Replenishment Cost – Whenever we elect to move an SKU to a separate pick area to pick eaches or cases, we need to make sure that the separate pick area is kept populated with product. We bear costs to accomplish this, no matter how efficient we make that operation.
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Capital Cost – Any technology comes with cost. It may be a new light directed pod of carousels, or narrow aisle wire guided man up picking. You may have completely paid for a technology in which case from a slotting standpoint; the capital cost is considered ‘sunk cost’ and therefore treated as zero capital. You also may be spending $7000 per month on a new each pick picking technology. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the maximum savings reported by slotting would result from returning that technology and save the $7000 per month and use an alternate technology?
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Primary Pick Inventory Levels - Anytime we elect to have a primary pick area, we need to decide how much inventory is the ‘right’ amount to stock. As we insert more days of inventory in the primary areas, we lessen the cost of replenishment, but we increase our total primary picking costs because there are fewer parts that can fit in the primary pick area. This is a difficult point to balance. There are competing costs. The truth only becomes apparent when ‘all’ of the costs are carefully weighed. Only then can we find that optimal point for our operation to maximize savings.
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Zone Visits per Order – One additional direct savings made possible by a slotting is to reduce the average number of Zones that our orders must visit to be picked. Whenever an order goes to a zone for picking, there is overhead required to initiate the order in the zone, pick the order, and prepare the order for exit.
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New Capital Evaluation – Because Slot-LE is armed with understanding of the above costs, it is easy to substitute a new technology and based on our expectations of efficiency of that new technology, determine if it is the best technology to purchase. If the slotting does not use any of the new technology, we can question its effectiveness. If, on the other hand Slot-LE uses the technology and shows the savings we can realize, we are in a position to understand the center’s ROI for that technology and further evaluate the appropriateness of its purchase.
If you are considering slotting your warehouse and you want to go beyond just frequency based slotting methods, contact the professionals at Outsource Equipment Company at 1-866-971-1032.
What is ProFormance-LE?
ProFormance-LE is a unique time tracking automation tool to easily measure employee productivity and performance by event in your operation. Accurately measure, track and evaluate the productivity of your entire workforce with ProFormance-LE.
You can better manage what you can measure!
When it comes to recording and tracking individual tasks, the conventional use of manual entry timesheet systems are inherently flawed. They contain guessed or estimated entries and require time consuming processes to enter the data into spreadsheets or databases. ProFormance-LE is a cost effective system that provides you with accurate consistent records of your work. This is helpful in identifying the relative costs of performing different tasks and arms you with information to improve overall performance.
Measuring Performance Has Never Been So Easy
ProFormance-LE is offered as a site license, which means you can run the application on as many workstations and monitor as many users as you choose.
An Order Picking Example:
Step #1: From a single screen an employee enters their id number (easily integrates with scanning the employees barcode badge), and the order or batch number of orders to be processed.
Step #2: The employe begins the picking operation while ProFormance-LE automatically calculates the amount of work to complete and instantly begins tracking time.
Step #3: When the picking task is complete, the employee goes to the station and enters or scans their id number and presses the task complete button.
That’s all there is to it! All of the statistics are kept for the employee, team, task, shift, and job.
Features:
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Increase productivity 10% to 25%
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Works with any set of tasks or activities
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Key Performance Measure Reporting
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Easy data download from your host system
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Real-Time tracking of employees and jobs
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Compares actual performance to work standards
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Proven results in many locations
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Custom modules for 3PL centers
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Custom modules for private distribution
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Custom modules for manufacturing
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Professional Management Services available
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Real-Time tracking of multiple centers
MasterPLAN-LE
The "information age" is bringing new opportunities to companies through the vast amounts of performance data that is collected, stored, and maintained. Capitalizing on the Business Intelligence (BI) from this data will define new standards for competition and return on investment to stock holders in companies.
MasterPLAN-LE is a software tool engineered to intelligently integrate "raw" supply chain performance data in order to define and utilize the business intelligence. MasterPLAN-LE provides the ability to not only optimize existing supply chain operations but simplify ongoing strategic decision making.
If you are a decision maker or accountable for performance of your company supply chain then MasterPLAN-LE is a must have.
Features:
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Revenue Growth Planner
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New Asset Growth Planner (e.g. Stores, Warehouses,
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Manufacturing, Distributors, etc.)
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Material Redirection Planner (e.g. Close Warehouses, Aggregate
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Slow moving products, etc.)
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Multi-level supply chain modeling
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Key Performance Measure Reporting
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Alternative Design Comparison
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Graphical and Animated Depiction of the Supply Chain
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Seamless ERP connectivity
CentriCity-LE
Site Selection Tools for Manufacturing and Distribution Resources
Centricity-LE is a distribution planning and site location tool-set designed to aid the process of locating manufacturing and distribution resources more effectively. The Technique relies on “Mini-sum Algorithms” to optimize location on the basis of numerous weighted factors. Locations by 5-Digit Zip Code. Weighted Performance Measures at each Location. Each Existing Location pulls on New Site to Drive Optimal Final Location.
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Technique Allows User Defined Performance Measures
such as: Units Shipped, Cycle Time, $ per Unit Shipped
The goal of
Centricity-LE is to guide location decisions based on the economic considerations for maximizing customer service and minimizing operating costs. Some of the Factors taken into account are:
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How much stock is needed at different locations to optimize customer service
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Number and size of shipments from each distribution point
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Inbound and Outbound Freight Rates by Product Category
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Manufacturing and Distribution Center Capacities
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Labor force availability and costs
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Service levels by customer class
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Tax Base and Incentive Packages
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