Business

What do you know about Automatic identification and data capture?

These days logistic sector of world is going through a transformation phase. It awards enormous growth to the warehouse solution. In order to keep the speed of the development market, every organization needs a high-end Goods to Person Delivery Robot Online solution that is both intelligent and flexible. With this aim, the process of warehouse automation speeds up. It not only reduces the cost, enhance profitability but also outpace the competition.

With the warehouse automation, businesses are planning to control the entire information and material flow. So that companies can easily manage their staff as well as available resource.

Inventory management is one the most complex task in the warehouse management system. It is hard to know how many items are present in the warehouse. Further many a time situation arise when companies have to stop the delivery process, as suddenly a product was out of the stock. No matter how much time you might have invested in the warehouse management, still companies have to deal with the subject of stock accuracy. In this situation automatic identification and data capture technology of warehouse automation came for the rescue.

Let’s explore what automatic identification and data capture process is:-

An automated warehouse system requires the ability to track every item in the inventory in real time. Identification happens at receiving process when item/pallets are unloaded from the truck; the inventory item is scanned and added to the warehouse inventory. Having the inventory registered in the same place facilitates stock count, auditing and matching against incoming/outgoing orders, and reduces room for errors and inventory write downs.

After registration, each inventory item will be registered and logged with a scanner connected to the WMS as it passes through each step of the order fulfilment process until the completed order has been delivered. Leveraging this data and incorporating it into corporate supply chain can be a great asset to your operations as it helps to your purchases, keeping inventories at a minimum without being out of stock, as well as reducing the amount of erroneous picks that lead to costly double handling and unsatisfied customers.

As per a renowned supply chain consulting firm, following are the main causes behind order fulfilment errors in traditional paper-based warehouses:

Quantity misread or transposed: Picker misreads from the list due to bad formatting and picks the wrong quantity

Miscount of quantity: Picker reads the right quantity to be picked, but makes a mistake when counting the actual stock.

Wrong Item: Picker erroneously picks the wrong item. 90%of the time these mistakes happen at the picker’s end.

Item omissions: Picker omitting the item from the Order Fulfillment Equipment Alberta despite the fact that the item is available in stock.

There is a variety of different scanning technologies available for use in the identification and registration of inventory items where the choice of technology depends on costs, desired throughput rates and accuracy.

Radio Frequency Scanning Devices (50-200 orderliness/hour per operator, 99.3-99.5% accuracy) are the most deployed devices and use barcode scanners in conjunction with radio transmitters that receive and transmit information about the item location, quantity to be picked. Once order is picked and placed in a pallet/tote, the information regarding the placed location is relayed back to the WMS. It is the most flexible cost effective option, but is limited in throughput and efficiency

Pick-to-Light (100-400 orderliness/hour, 99.5-99.7% accuracy): Light displays identify the correct location of the item to be picked, the quantity and order in which they are to be picked, and where the picked item is to be placed. Once picking is done, the picker presses a button on their scanning device to confirm job done.

Voice-directed picking (175-275 orderliness/hour, 99.7-99.97% accuracy): Functions in a similar way to Pick-to-Light, except here the picker receives instructions by voice from the WMS as to where they should go and what items to pick.

Visual Logistics: Use of graphics and images instead of text, or in addition to light, as an enhancement to RF and Pick-to-light technologies, improving both speed and accuracy.

Scanner-based picking technologies are also usually fitted to specific picking stations where goods-to-man systems are in place and the need for workers to be guided around is no longer needed.