Ecommerce has ushered in an era of constant variability in order demand as online and mobile shoppers expect to be able to buy any product at any time. Constant variability makes it difficult for companies to predict what they will be selling on any given day.
From one day to the next, the rate of change in the stock keeping units (SKUs) required to fill orders may change by as much as 85%. This fluctuation in SKU demand increases the complexity of picking operations, slowing down the fulfillment process as workers have to travel around the warehouse to retrieve requested products.
When retailers had a better sense of what consumers would be purchasing on a regular basis, they could take steps to position high-demand SKUs in more readily accessible areas for picking. These “forward pick areas” would house frequently ordered SKUs so that picking retrieval times could be diminished and order fulfillment could be expedited.
But now that ecommerce demand is so variable, forward pick areas would have to be continuously changed out to accommodate the fluctuation in item demand. The resulting process of constantly reslotting SKUs would ultimately defeat the purpose of having a forward pick area, while requiring additional labor just to keep pace with inventory reshuffling demands and adding numerous item touches to the fulfillment process.
So what’s a retailer to do?
If you have a high volume ecommerce operation, an ASRS be your answer. A roaming robotic automated storage and retrieval system provides the ideal solution for keeping pace with the fluctuations in SKU demand that are inherent to e-commerce fulfillment today.
Utilizing a unique configuration that enables shuttles to be shared between levels along with algorithmic logic for product movement provided by MSI Automate’s Automate software, MSI Automate’s ASRS shuttle comes as close as any system to enabling equal accessibility to all SKUs within a system.
This functionality, known as SKU equality, alleviates the inefficiencies in online and mobile order fulfillment that ecommerce retailers typically experience when using manual operations. Simply put, it doesn’t matter to the ASRS if SKU demand changes from one day or moment to the next, because the system can easily keep pace with the dynamic nature of ecommerce fulfillment and fluctuations in SKU demand.
An added benefit to the ASRS is that it can be, and often is, used to support goods-to-person order fulfillment stations. In such operations, the ASRS retrieves SKUs needed to fill orders from storage and conveys them to pickers at work stations. A goods-to-person approach for picking eliminates worker travel around the warehouse and speeds up the order fulfillment process.
When goods-to-person stations are used in conjunction with an MSI Automate ASRS shuttle, the need for forward pick areas is eliminated — as are all the associated replenishment/reslotting tasks associated with maintaining the pick areas. In fact, an ASRS supported goods-to-person operation is so efficient, it can cut the workforce required for manual picking, replenishment, and stock control by up to two-thirds.
Although an ASRS does require an upfront capital investment, the labor force reductions that are realized as a result of incorporating an automated storage and retrieval system into a fulfillment operation generally enable a company to recoup its investment in a period of three years.
But the justification for an automated storage and retrieval system doesn’t just come from labor cost reductions alone. An ASRS not only tames SKU demand fluctuations, it also expedites the fulfillment process, enabling ecommerce and omnichannel retailers to adhere to order delivery commitments — which ultimately increases customer loyalty and generates the many revenue benefits that customer loyalty brings.
So is an ASRS right for your operation?
The answer lies in your company data. We’d be happy to help you uncover it.
Walter High is VP Marketing at MSI Automate, where he has worked since 2012.