E-WMS

E-WMS Replenishment and SKU Management: replenishing by full pallets

WMS documentation

Introduction

This document describes the functionality of replenishing with full pallets when using WMS Replenishment and SKU Management.

Description

From product update 404, WMS Replenishment in combination with WMS SKU Management is more flexible in transferring full SKUs to replenish your picking locations.

Without 'Full SKU Replenishment', you would be advised to take the required quantity as loose sales units from the source pallet, but in reality you will not pick 30 sales units from a pallet which has 100 sales units. You will take the whole pallet, unload the 30 on a picking location, and put the remaining 70 sales units (the pallet) back on the original location or on another location; or just put the whole pallet on the picking location. From product update 404, this has become more flexible; new settings were added to configure how you want to replenish when using SKU stock.

This document has following main sections:

requirements
known issues and limitations
configuration
usage

Requirements

Following is required to use this new functionality.

License: SE1381 E-WMS II (offers both WMS Replenishment and SKU Management).
If you have older license SE5710 Pick-IT Replenishment, then SKU Management is not enabled. Please contact Exact support or your Exact account manager on how to upgrade to SE1381.
SKU Management enabled and usage of SKU items
Communication type 'ASP'
To use the setting 'Full SKU with DPA advice': DPA locations have to be configured through WMS Location Types, where these location types meet the requirements for DPA: location (type) defined as 'variable' or 'fixed' item. The E-WMS general setting 'Directed Put-away' does not have to be enabled to use 'Full SKU with DPA advice'

Points of attention

In general: scanning replenishment orders is an one-step scan process: only the 'source' location is scanned, and not the target location. The target location is shown as an instruction text.
When rounding the picking advice to a full SKU, you may want to enable the WMS Replenishment validation settings 'Allow transferring more', to avoid a picking error.

Configuration

General settings

Following settings are available in menu System, General, Settings, WMS Replenishment, section 'Picking advice' (shown settings are available when WMS SKU Management is enabled):

Setting 'Full SKU Replenishment'

This setting determines whether a picking advice for a SKU item is rounded to a full SKU, and what to do when only part of the SKU is required on the target location;

The select options have following meaning (in a sample where 50 sales units are required and the pallet default holds 150 sales units):

Per sales unit
This is the default value for this setting, and the default way of replenishment.
E-WMS will advice to pick 50 from a pallet having 150 sales units. The remainder 100 is not transferred and remains on the source location.
Full SKU with DPA advice
This choice will advice to pick whole SKU (holding 150 sales units), and E-WMS will generate two advice lines:
1. to put quantity 50 to the replenishment target location
2. to put remainder 622 to another (bulk type) location by a calculated Directed Put Away advice.
The setting 'DPA policy' determines how to decide on that other bulk location.
Full SKU
Will advice to just pick the whole SKU of 150, so generates one advice line: to put quantity 150 to the replenishment target location, instead of the actual required 50 sales units.
This can also be regarded as rounding the requirement to a full SKU.
When choosing this option, available free space on the target location is not validated. It is assumed that the full pallet can be stored in the aisle near the target location, when it would not fit on the target location.

Setting 'DPA policy'

This setting, introduced in release 408, requires the use of 'Location distances', and gives the possibility to apply a specific policy to put the remainder of the pallet away:

None: the list of available DPA target locations is sorted by location preference and alphabetical warehouse location code (default value for this setting)
Near item default location: the list of available bulk locations is sorted by distance between the item default location and available target locations, then by default distance (see next setting), then by location preference and alphabetical location code.
Near source location: the list of available bulk locations is sorted by distance between the transfer source location and available target locations, then by default distance (see next setting), then by location preference and alphabetical location code.

'SKU per item' setting 'Full SKU Replenishment'

It is possible that your preferred replenishment method depends on the type of SKU, therefore the setting 'Full SKU Replenishment' is also available in menu WMS, Setup, SKU, SKU per item. This way you are able to override the default SKU replenishment behavior per item per SKU type:

Default
Apply the general setting 'Full SKU replenishment' (default value for this setting)
Per sales unit
Will advice to pick 50 from a pallet having 150 sales units. The remainder 100 is not transferred.
In order to do this, 'breaking' must be allowed on the bulk location and for the SKU.
Full SKU with DPA advice
Will advice to pick whole SKU (holding 150 sales units), and will generate two advice lines:
1. to put quantity 50 to the replenishment target location
2. to put remainder 100 to another (bulk type) location by a calculated Directed Put Away advice
Full SKU
Will advice to pick the whole SKU (holding 150 sales units), generates one advice line: to put quantity 150 to the replenishment target location, instead of the actual required 50 sales units.
This can also be regarded as rounding the requirement to a full SKU.
When choosing this option, available free space on the target location is not validated. It is assumed that the full pallet can be stored in the aisle near the target location, when it would not fit on the target location.

Usage

Changes in Control Center Replenishment

Full SKU with DPA advice

When generating a picking advice while the new setting was set to 'Full SKU with DPA advice', you will notice that in the control center, when opening a generated advice, an extra advice line is generated and the lines in the lower part of the screen are blocked. This is because advice lines in the upper part of the screen are linked to each other.

In the header panel, column 'DPA advice' is shown. When enabled (green checkmark), then the line has been generated automatically as DPA advice.

In this sample, item A2060 is to be replenished to location 02-05-1, for a quantity of 60 sales units. The full SKU has 75 sales units, so the remainder of the SKU (15 sales units) is advised to put to bulk location 01-17-1. This put-away advice is based on the same rules as Directed Put Away (DPA) for SKU Management, for which usage of WMS Location Types with enabled 'DPA target location' is required.

After processing this transfer, the SKU number will remain with the stock on bulk location "01-17-1". On the item card you will see four transactions (transfer of 15 and of 60).

Scanning 'Full SKU with DPA'

When a full SKU is to be transferred, because the setting 'Full SKU replenishment' was set to 'Full SKU with DPA advice', this is indicated on the hand terminal with the instruction "Pick full SKU".

Although in WMS Replenishment only the 'source pick' is scanned (the target location is assumed and not scanned), both quantities have to be confirmed.
Therefore, the 'scan unit' is set to 'Sales (unit)' and not 'Outer SKU', which means that after scanning the SKU number, the quantity still has to be entered.

The instruction text is shown, showing the first target location (the replenishment target location)
The SKU number is scanned in the 'source location' field
Because the 'scan unit' (top of the scan screen) is automatically set to 'Units', the operator can enter the quantity
The quantity has to be confirmed
The instruction text for the remainder of the SKU is shown
The scan screen still shows the same source location, where the SKU was picked from
The SKU number can be scanned in the 'item' field
The quantity to be put to the target bulk location, has to be confirmed

Full SKU

When the setting 'Full SKU Replenishment' is set to "Full SKU", the quantity 'ordered' (required), is rounded to a full SKU.

The scan unit is automatically set to 'Outer', so after scanning the SKU number the quantity does not have to be confirmed anymore.

Scanning 'Full SKU'

Scanning a 'Full SKU' replenishment order is straight-forward:

Since the full pallet is transferred, scanning the SKU number can suffice, even as single scan when combined with scanner setting 'Focus to next field'.