The system installed by TouchPath in its Kidlington plant allows Essentra to send out a team of pickers, independent of each other to pick product which is then consolidated in a central sorting area. “Say a customer places an order for three types of product. They are located in three completely different areas of the warehouse, and picked by three different warehouse staff” Michael Armstrong explains. “Each picker has no knowledge of what his colleagues are picking or which customer order they are picking for.”
 
“The benefit is that it makes the pick time very quick, and the picking itself very accurate. We are picking around 30 lines an hour per individual against the previous rate of 15 to 20, even though we have added a sortation and packing stage to the process.
 
“We estimate that every pick error costs us around £60 in administration alone – and on that basis we are looking to save up to £50,000 a year through reduced pick errors. We expect to make further savings by reducing the level of overtime.”
 
Key to the success of the new system is the Control Centre. This enables warehouse management to assign specific picks to specific pickers, filtering by warehouse, zone, load, customer or order then tracking the status of those picks as each is taking place.
 
The Control Centre does away with the need for pick notes, as when the picker logs into the WMS the screen displays the specific picks that have been assigned to them. It also provides management with a real-time picture of the current picking load and its status.
 
“Fans of the new picking system say it is the most intuitive they have used” Michael Armstrong concludes.