Case Study: Implementing a Pack to Light Solution
in a Major Retail Distribution Center
by Greg Morneau
Morneau of Sekel Associates worked with stakeholders from the allocations group, the DC control room (where pick tickets are printed and collated) and the Pack Lane Supervisor to analyze the checks that were currently taking place manually. He developed functional designs for system checks.
The PTL system required several pieces of information including:
- Grab ID
- Store Number
- Quantity
- Merchandise Profile (Loose or Bundle)
Additional information was required for our client’s internal management and reporting purposes. The PTL vendor modified their database to provide specific information including PO number, allocation number, carton code, pre-pack code, size code, style and color. This information is included in the carton message that is sent from the PTL system to the host system. The information is also used in the creation of Store Carton Manifests and multiple levels of carton audits in the DC. Once a carton is “closed” the carton content information is transmitted from the PTL to the host.
Streamlining the Process
Once a day, shipping information is extracted from the shipping database for all merchandise cartons that have been scanned that day. Using the extracted information the host produces a carton manifest which merges the carton information, ID and contents from the PTL with the shipping tracking number for the carton.
For ecommerce stores, the 3rd party vendor required some system and process changes to handle carton level manifests, so the team decided to leave the implementation of carton level manifests for ecommerce stores to a later time; however they were able to bring the ecommerce stores into the pack lanes for packing. This would enable future carton manifesting for the 3rd party vendor enabling them to receive at carton level rather than unit by unit receiving.
Pack lanes were reconfigured into a single lane configuration instead of a dual lane configuration and volume was balanced across lanes to smooth the volume of incoming merchandise to each lane.