Pouch Sorter
Raising the Bar on Complex Order Fulfilment
Customers want their orders fast, omni-channel fulfilment is a competitive advantage, managing high return rates is expensive and labour is hard to come by. These and other realities are all creating new and unique pressures within the order fulfilment environment.
Dematic Pouch Sorter is a flexible storage system that consists of pouches suspended from rolling adapters running in a track. Each pouch carries a single item, which can be identified by its radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. Items of various types can go into the pouches, including folded garments, shoeboxes, accessories, books and general merchandise.
Items are inducted into the pouch system, which sorts, sequences and delivers those pouches and hanging items to the packaging station for consolidation and further processing.
A single solution that can handle a wide range of order profiles, the Dematic Pouch Sorter manages everything from the small e-commerce orders to large retail orders, and everything in between.
Dematic Software gets orders out quickly and eliminates the need for wave planning and multi-stage sortation. It enables fast, easy processing of urgent and priority orders without the need for expensive and time-consuming expediting.
Dematic Pouch Sorter: Solving distribution and returns challenges
E-commerce growth is fuelling the rise in omni-channel fulfilment. Consumers expect the right products to arrive within a very short time frame. Dematic Pouch Sorter supports store replenishment and direct-to-consumer orders from a single distribution centre.
It’s easy to fulfil discrete elements of an order for both retail and e-commerce orders from one workstation. Regardless of how many items are in an order, operators simply pull the required items out of the pouches or off of the hangers as they arrive (in sequence if required) and packs them. And because the items are delivered overhead, operators have plenty of working space to handle other value-added services.
Pouch systems seamlessly integrate the returns process into the fulfilment process to make the returned goods available for shipment immediately upon processing.
Pouch systems are suspended from the ceiling to take advantage of unused overhead space, making them ideal for space-constrained operations.
The ergonomic working position and quiet components make pouch systems extremely operation friendly. The European Union’s PPE Regulation, for example, identifies workplace noise as a significant health risk, prompting a category change for hearing protection. Even without regulations, workplace noise is a comfort issue that can impact employee retention.
Dematic uses patented waveless software to dynamically prioritise work and route products for rapid order fulfilment, thus extending order cut-off times while ensuring on-time shipments.
Are you ready for a pouch system?
The modular design handles demand variations without sacrificing productivity so you can idle unnecessary capacity when demand is low.
The rail structure extends throughout your facility and is easily elevated to take advantage of unused vertical space. The system supports simple and clear workflows from loading to pack stations:
- Unique carrier equipped with RF tags for a secure trace in the system
- At the loading stations, the item is married to its pouch
- Once the item is in the pouch, it’s not touched again until being packed for shipping
- Sequenced delivery to pack stations is possible, with the option to display pouch contents on a screen in list or product picture format
Dematic Pouch System features
- High-volume each picking operations
- Item dimensions up to 500 x 400 x 160 mm and up to 3 kg weight
- Any mix of small orders (e-commerce) to large orders (retail)
- Space constrained or odd layouts
- Product stored and picked from conventional shelving or automated buffer (Dematic Multishuttle®)
- High seasonal peaks
- High returns volumes (online apparel return rates can be greater than 30%)
- Shipping for the same-day or next-day delivery
Typical functions within your facility
A typical system includes loading, buffering, transport, sortation and packing areas on one or more levels. The layout can be configured to fit nearly any space.
Items are loaded into a pouch manually or automatically, with the option to manage over-size items in dedicated bags.
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