S
hoppers are increasingly getting more
selective about fresh food. In 2017,
fresh food accounted for 30.5 percent
of food purchases. This consumer demand
places even more pressure on fresh food supply
chains to transparently deliver food fast, and
with the highest quality. For this reason, gro-
cery warehouses are increasing their invest-
ments in automation to assist with food quality
control, compliance, and specialized needs.
However, these warehouses can face limitations
when multiple types of automation are used
and mixed together. Sortation equipment,
AS/RS, conveyors, layer pickers and robotics
can conflict with each other.
Many fresh food companies rely on some sort
of software program to help manage their
inventories, whether a warehouse management
system (WMS), enterprise resource planning
(ERP) solution or something homegrown. Yet,
these software programs are often older, and
moreover, do not interface with equipment
control systems, material handling components
and in some cases manual operations. In a time
when order accuracy, traceability, speed and
cost savings are of utmost importance, the fresh
food industry requires a more robust solution
driven by an effective warehouse execution
system (WES).
Fairly new, but quickly catching on across
industries, a WES is a set system software that
combines the functionality of a WMS and a
warehouse control system (WCS) into a single,
integrated solution. Essentially, a WES provides
the inventory management, storage optimiza-
tion and traceability features of a WMS, and the
automation control components of a WCS.
A WES is able to receive and track product, as
it marries inventory to customer orders. When
orders are received, the WES breaks them into
logical units of work and then directs material
handling equipment and/or manual labor to
execute the work. This “two-in-one” solution
drastically reduces the complexity of utilizing
several different “function-specific” applications
and simplifies the entire warehousing opera-
tion.
For fresh food, a key benefit of a WES is its flex-
ibility. A solution that can easily integrate with
other applications and various types of ware-
housing equipment, regardless of the amount
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of automation is crucial. In fact, automated
systems are not required to use a WES. You
can utilize just the WMS capabilities, and then
“turn on” the WCS functionality when needed.
This allows operators to familiarize themselves
with the system and its user interface, thereby
reducing training time and expediting system
start-up, and then new equipment or automa-
tion can be introduced as the business grows.
The flexibility of an efficient WES can also
allow fresh food chains to better allocate their
resources, equipment and labor. This is vital,
because with real-time visibility into their
equipment, inventory levels, order profiles and
SKUs, operators can quickly shift priorities to
maintain faulted equipment or manage opera-
tions more efficiently when bottlenecks occur
in certain areas of the operation. They can also
anticipate bottlenecks and production short-
ages, rather than reacting to these situations at
the last minute. For example, if workers find
that they are short a particular SKU during load
out, they can easily look into the system and see
how quickly they can get that SKU. Then, they
can reallocate resources to the appropriate area.
Or, they can send the product directly from
production to load out for that particular order.
Again, automation technology is not needed to
take advantage of a WES. Even if you are still
using conventional labor, the systems stream-
line worker productivity by presenting the tasks
to the operator in a very succinct, meaningful
manner. As a result, order fulfillment is more
accurate—the right products go out the door
to the right customer at the right time. Plus,
the systems’ traceability functions ensure that
rules such as FEFO (first expired, first out) are
followed.
When considering a WES, the first step is to
perform a thorough analysis of your operations.
You may be surprised to find where you are
incurring costs, perhaps from double-han-
dling stacks and pallets, long load-out times or
inaccurate inventory information. Also, before
implementation, be sure to clearly define your
expectations and desired results. Most impor-
tantly, choose a modular solution – one that is
flexible and will grow with your business as you
add new systems, equipment and automated
technologies.
The Satellite Review
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