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A slotting system is a software application designed to find the optimal pick location for each product in a warehouse or distribution center for the purpose of improving material handling efficiency. The reason efficiency is improved is because travel time typically accounts for 60-70% of the time spent by warehouse direct labor associates and slotting minimizes travel time required to retrieve and store products within the facility
In many warehouses, operators store merchandise wherever it can fit until eventually a random chaos takes over and little or no semblance of efficiency can be achieved. In this environment, there is little rhyme or reason as to which items go where within the distribution center.
Inventory slotting identifies the most efficient assignment of a pick slot for each item. Product slotting rules may depend on a wide variety of factors such as cube movement volume, order line frequency, package dimensions and weight, package size and format, product fragility or crushability, material handling equipment used, layout of the facility, labor rates, etc.
The art/science of slotting has been around for the past three decades and many distribution centers informally manage the process of slotting through internal spreadsheet reports that indicate if changes to item profiles have occurred such that reslots may be required. In recent years, multiple packaged software tools have become commercially available to optimize the slotting process. Slotting applications are sold as standalone applications that can be integrated into a Warehouse Management System (WMS) or as integrated extensions of WMS applications. The main benefit of integrating the slotting application into the WMS is the ability to invoke directed work tasks for operators to execute to execute the reslotting process. A good slotting system will advise management of the financial benefit (i.e. labor savings) associated with each slotting re-assignment so that management can decide which products to reslot on a periodic basis and which products to leave as is because the reslot effort does not generate sufficient savings.
There are other noteworthy variances between the commercial slotting packages available on the market today. One slotting package offers an integrated 3D AutoCAD image to visualize a heat map of the facility which helps to proactively understand potential congestion points before implementing slotting changes. Some slotting packages are complicated and expensive to deploy and sadly end up as shelf-ware as the application becomes too time-consuming and other priorities take over. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of slotting is that a good slotting strategy has to be developed before working with any slotting package.
MWPVL International provides consulting services to companies seeking the benefits of labor efficiency improvements through advanced slotting. MWPVL International works with your experienced operators and your item movement history file to determine how to best organize product families within the warehouse. MWPVL International provides trusted experience in helping companies with the following types of questions:
- How should we organize the products within our distribution center to minimize the travel time required to perform daily order picking and product storage functions.
- Which product family groupings and slotting strategies make sense for our operation to maximize labor efficiency, to minimize product damage and to ensure safe ergonomics?
- Do we need a commercial software application? Is it possible to save the money and work with a spreadsheet approach and if so what reports should we develop to get the job done?
- Which slotting software application is best suited for our company, distribution center operation, and financial budget?
- What is the business case for investing in a slotting application? What is the total capital investment requirements including internal and external resources and what financial benefits can we realistically expect to obtain from a new system?
- What are the main differences between the solutions available within the existing market place and which vendors present the match to our company’s requirements?
- Is there a structured process that we should follow when selecting a slotting application to ensure that we have done the appropriate due diligence to protect our company’s interests?
MWPVL International Inc. provides strictly unbiased advice and trusted experience in helping companies through the following efforts:
- Developing a slotting strategy from the ground up to maximize efficiency, safety and quality
- Developing the business case and financial justification for a slotting application
- Slotting requirements definition and RFP Development
- Development of structured software demonstration scripts
- Vendor/solution evaluation and selection
- Software negotiation and acquisition
- Developing the project budget, plan, schedule, internal and external resource requirements for deployment
- Project Management
- Software implementation
- Ongoing support
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