Wave picking at around 30 lines an hour for Essentra
Essentra Components' main production and distribution center for Europe, in Kidlington near Oxford, needed a different picking solution: picking volumes had doubled in four years, on a site with four floors of mezzanine plus high-bay storage.
TouchPath installed a wave-picking system in which pickers work independently and a central sorting area consolidates each order.
Two ways to pick one order
Most Essentra facilities use order picking. Kidlington now picks in waves.
Mezzanine, four floors
High-bay storage
Central sorting area
Floor 2, mezzanine
1
Floor 4, mezzanine
2
High-bay storage
3
Order picking
One picker picks everything for one customer, visiting every area of the warehouse.
Wave picking at Kidlington
A team of pickers, independent of each other, picks product that is then consolidated in a central sorting area.
| Company | Essentra Components, part of FTSE 250 company Essentra plc, with regional distribution sites across Europe and a network extending to the Americas and Asia |
|---|---|
| Products | Plastic injection molded, vinyl dip molded and metal items; over 80 million industrial components a week; more than 136,700 finished items |
| Site | Kidlington near Oxford (UK): an injection molding facility, over 80,000 square feet of warehousing and 68 distribution staff |
| TouchPath footprint | WMS systems in 23 Essentra sites across Europe, five in the Far East and three in North America, in eleven languages including Chinese, Turkish and Finnish |
“We have always worked well with TouchPath and they have been responsive to our needs. They know our business, they understand what we do and how we do it”
How wave picking works
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Assign the picks
In the Control Center, warehouse management assigns specific picks to specific pickers.
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Pick from the screen
When a picker logs into the WMS, the screen displays the picks assigned to them, so pick notes are no longer needed.
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Pick independently
Each picker works on their own picks, with no knowledge of what the others are picking or which customer order it is for.
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Consolidate, sort and pack
The central sorting area brings the lines of each customer order together for sortation and packing.
The Control Center: picks assigned and tracked in real time
Key to the success of the new system is the Control Center. Warehouse management tracks the status of each pick as it is taking place, with a real-time picture of the current picking load.
Filter picks by
- Warehouse
- Zone
- Load
- Customer
- Order
“Fans of the new picking system say it is the most intuitive they have used”
Results: faster, more accurate picking and fewer pick errors
Essentra expects further savings from less overtime.
“The benefit is that it makes the pick time very quick, and the picking itself very accurate.”
Pick errors, by Essentra's estimate
- Cost of a pick erroraround£60in administration alone
- Targeted savingup to£50,000a year, from fewer pick errors
- Complaints0.07%per 1,000 lines picked
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