Softeon, a global supply chain software provider, demonstrated its breakthrough order fulfillment system at the National Retail Federation’s “Big Show” at the Javits Center in New York City recently.
With the growth in “eaches” picking (or broken case picking in many distribution operations as a result of e-commerce) and other factors driving changes to order profiles, companies are turning to a variety of technologies to reduce picking costs. These technologies include voice, smart pick carts, put walls, pick-to-light and mobile robots to improve order picking productivity.
But in nearly all cases, those subsystems have their own control software, bringing a number of disadvantages. These can be making commodity hardware and the systems proprietary and expensive; requiring integration upfront and over time between those control systems and the WMS (warehouse management system); and providing limited ability to fully optimize the complete picking process. That process includes slotting, replenishment, real-time decisionmaking and exception handling.
The Softeon WMS eliminates all of these problems by directly managing all subsystems in any combination. This eliminates the need for third-party control software and interfaces. As a result, commodity hardware can be used, with savings of up to 70%. Cost and complexity of system deployments are also reduced substantially, as there is no need for integration between the WMS and subsystems.
Most importantly, double-digit gains in productivity can be achieved by having one system—the Softeon WMS—optimizing the entire picking, replenishment and slotting process, delivering levels of productivity that simply cannot be achieved by a WMS “throwing picks over the wall” for execution by these subsystems operating in silos, as it is commonly done.
Softeon’s OFS comes as part of its WMS solution, but is also available as a stand-alone product for companies that want to keep their inbound WMS systems in place.
Visit www.softeon.com for more details.
