Picking Efficiency for UPS

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Picking Efficiency & Time Standards for UPS

United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) is the world’s largest package delivery company and a provider of supply chain management solutions.

Project Objectives/Challenges

Process efficiencies at a client footwear facility in Hebron, Kentucky were falling short of expectations:

First year inbound activity was at near planned capacity
First year outbound order activity was 13% over planned
Units per pallet location were only half of planned, resulting in additional storage requirements

UPS had a substantial investment in automation; but those systems were processing less than half of unit activity.

Sedlak was engaged to identify short- and long-term facility and operational improvements to significantly increase distribution operation efficiencies and productivity while reducing costs.

What Sedlak Did

Through site visits, interviews and extensive data analysis, our team attained a thorough understanding of the current facility and requirements.

We reviewed unit picking processes, pick towers, replenishment and the sorter operation to identify bottlenecks and capacity constraints.

We confirmed IT capabilities to support order fulfillment and compared metrics to industry best practices while prioritizing and calculating the economics of selected alternatives.

Results

Better utilization of pick towers and the sorter, as well as introduction of Speed Cell shelving projected to:

Double order processing capacity
Dramatically reduce pick travel time and labor
Decrease the size of the pick area and create a centralized packing and shipping staging area

Overall pick tower recommendations projected to increase picks originating in the tower by 80%.

Enhanced WMS functionality expected to streamline replenishment, increase picks per hour and realize time efficiencies.

Wave release improvements recommended to support manageable flow of activity and generate sense of urgency to meet time standards.

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