Overview
The Dematic Route Delivery System for Piece and Case Picking is an order fulfillment system that distribute a product category to the same geographical locations on an established delivery route and regular cadence. The system accommodates both piece and case picking requirements and supports both mixed case palletizing and fluid loading of outbound loads.
The primary application is for wine, spirits, beer, soft drinks, and food distribution operations that make regular deliveries directly to small and large grocery stores, bars, restaurants, convenience stores, schools, hospitals, etc. Other applications include distributors of industrial supplies, healthcare products, and parts for automobile, truck, farm, and construction machinery.
Benefits
- Optimized workflows with on-demand, responsive fulfillment
- Real-time visibility to order fulfillment processes
- Pre-engineered, modular design with predictable, consistent performance
- Inventory/lot control, minimized theft/shrink
System description
The Dematic Route Delivery System for Piece and Case Picking has a pre-engineered, standardized design configuration that ensures predictable performance. Here is the general order of how the system functions:
Inbound and Put-away
The WMS host directs receiving and put-away management of cases.
Outbound Order Fulfillment
The WMS host process the orders and sends them to the Dematic Warehouse Execution System (WES) software, which plans and manages them. The system inducts empty shipping containers (cardboard) into the active piece pick modules, and for piece picking directs workers via voice technology.
Case pick to conveyor occurs in waves. The Dematic WES software prints a stack of labels to direct case picking for each worker. As an option, voiced-directed case pick is available.
Picked cases accumulate at the merge. Each merge conveyor lane consists of a wave that is released to the sorter. The sorter diverts each case to the appropriate route delivery truck for fluid loading or mixed case palletizing.
System management
The Dematic Warehouse Execution System (WES) software receives orders from the Warehouse Management System (WMS), sets delivery priorities, provides wave planning, prints case pick labels, and directs piece picking using voice technology. The Dematic WMS software manages the order fulfillment process from route, order, and wave creation to label printing and the lookup capability to monitor the system and manage anomaly conditions. It includes cubing algorithm for piece picking.
Warehouse Management System (Host)
- Order entry
- Inventory
- Receiving and reserve storage
Fulfillment orders
Status and completion
Dematic Warehouse Execution System
- Plan delivery routes
- Wave management, prioritization
- Direct picking for reverse stop loading
- Label printing for case pick
- Voice directed piece pick
- Synchronize piece and case picking
- Visibility and insight
Dematic Warehouse Execution System
- Conveyor
- Sorter
- Scanners
- Printers
Comparison
Dematic piece and case picking systems are more accurate, require less labor to operate, and use less warehouse space than conventional case picking systems.
| Conventional Case Picking | Dematic Route Delivery System |
| Manual operation throughput | Semi-automated with real-time control, visibility, and insight into operations |
| Single order picked with one pass through warehouse (discrete order pick) | Efficiently batch pick in waves |
| Case pick at floor level | Three or four-level case pick modules, smaller system footprint |
| Non-strategic mixed pick and palletize | Strategic and synchronized picking |
| Case pick to pallet on fork truck | Case pick to conveyor, fluid load to delivery trucks |
| Manual fork truck transport to shipping | Convey and sort transport to delivery trucks |
| Less throughput capacity in more time | More throughput capacity in less time |
| Dock sorting of orders to load truck in sequence | Orders flow to delivery truck in reverse route sequence |