Dynamic Slotting and Advanced Replenishment with Manhattan WMOS and MA Active
Industry:
- Apparel
Markets:
- Americas
- Europe
- Asia
ERP System:
- Oracle RMS
Applications in Scope:
- Manhattan Active Warehouse Management
- Manhattan WMOS
Project Location:
- North America
Company Overview:
A high-end apparel and shoes retailer operates multiple highly automated facilities, fulfilling various lines of businesses under the roof of multi-purpose warehouses across North America. Utilizing the world-leading WMS technology platforms (WMOS and MA Active) from Manhattan Associates and other warehouse automation solutions, the company stands at the forefront of innovation in the industry.
Objective:
- Traditional slotting strategies and configurations fail to consistently bring the right inventory to fast-moving areas, particularly when e-commerce and other selling channel demands fluctuate drastically on a daily basis for SKU profiles.
- Converting all pick modules into dynamic pick locations has not yielded the efficiencies required in replenishment and picking.
- Traditional allocation strategies and configurations do not efficiently direct products to the most effective pick levels in the mezzanines.
- Traditional waving, load planning, and delivery strategies are costly and significantly less efficient.
- In addition to that, operations wanted to improve work readiness before peak hours, ensuring sufficient inventory availability in pick slots to reduce wait times for pickers during outbound operations.
Solution Highlights:
What to Slot?
- Studied historical demand and compared it with current demand to identify discrepancies in ABC analysis and understanding why.
- Evaluated if the ABC analysis is indeed the correct approach to slotting.
- Our team confirmed that slotting must be based on daily demand variabilities, not solely on SKU profiling and past demand.
- Though we are assisting in building multiple algorithms for responsive slotting, ITOrizon recognized the necessity of AI to try multiple strategies, model, simulate, and predict variabilities, dynamic daily SKU profiling, and operational benefits.
How to Slot?
- We simulated replenishment scenarios for all industry best practices provided by Manhattan’s Replenishment Strategies and analyzed their system outcomes and operational benefits.
- We determined the best configuration approaches for optimal replenishment outcomes, considering replenishment to existing and new locations, deferred replenishment to existing and new locations, and various replenishment load distributions across all zones.
Where to Slot?
- Assessed if zone-level dynamic slotting suffices for efficient slotting and picking.
- Our team confirmed that slotting cannot solely rely on demand variabilities, necessitating special strategies to place fast-moving products at the best picking levels across all zones.
- We concluded that AI can aid in assessing the effectiveness of new strategies and identifying drivers positively or negatively impacting operational goals.
How to Wave and Plan Deliveries?
- Evaluated if preconfigured capacity-based waving and allocation rules result in optimized replenishment, picking, packing, loading, and shipping.
- We confirmed that a one-size-fits-all approach is not optimal for all stores and as a first step we implemented multiple picking window and delivery window strategies without compromising store demand or customer expectations.
- Determined that AI can enhance the prediction of more dynamic waving and delivery strategies compared to fixed strategies.
Benefits to the Customer:
- Users can efficiently pick fast-moving items from the best picking levels and high-volume orders based on current day prediction across all selling channels.
- Maximization of location utilization at pick modules based on the best pick locations without creating putaway or pick congestion.
- Maximizing picking efficiency and pick and pass effectiveness while minimizing warehouse picking costs.
- Minimizing delivery costs to stores and store stocking costs.
- Reducing the carbon footprint through fewer shipments and boxes.
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ITOrizon, Inc., a global end-to-end IT supply chain ecosystem service leader based in Atlanta, with offshore locations in India and Dubai, has been helping clients ensure success for more than 10 years. We maximize the value of existing ecosystem investments while outpacing the competition with a human-first service delivery client experience. Industry analysts such as Gartner, ISG, and ARC Advisory have recognized us for our high-performance services team, built to scale and delivering strategic advisory, implementation/integration, digital transformation, and managed support services.
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