The use of technology and automation in support of warehousing has been around almost as long as warehousing. As warehousing is, in its most basic sense, the storage of goods, herding animals into a coral or placing the grain harvest into sheltered buildings is also a form of warehousing. While technology and automation in its early times was primitive to today’s standard, it existed.
The use of a wheeled cart to move sacks of grain would be early automation. Note that automation includes mechanizing. Placing pebbles in a bag to record the number of animals taken out of the coral in morning, and removing the pebbles when returning them at night would have been a technological advancement to control receiving and shipping, (as we would refer to them today).
Over thousands of years improvements were made, but it was not until the mid- 1950s that the rate of improvement and change saw a significant acceleration. Since then, some of the tools started including bar codes, AGVs (Automatic Guided Vehicles), RFID, AS/RS for both pallets and cases, precise electronic scales, pick-to-light racks, robotics, voice directed systems, automated convoys, high reach and other trucks including man-up vehicles, pallet racking, data collection systems, etc. Above all, the most important tool is the advanced WMS, Warehousing Management System. Many of these tools are tied in with computer and PLC interfaces.
The scope and complexity of warehousing has expanded well beyond storage. Apart from basic functions of shipping/receiving, storage, order-picking, packaging, consolidation, etc., it now can include tasks such as repackaging, kitting, product quality control, asset control and in some cases the integration of light manufacturing. A variety of approaches to the above functions have been developed as warehouse operating processes and sub processes. These processes may use combinations of warehouse tools and possibly bridge multiple tasks. For example, the order-picking task can have various process approaches with names like individual order pick, batch picking (multiple orders either for same customer or different customers), wave-picking, zone picking, pick-and-pass, pick-and consolidate, pick-to-shipping box, pick- and-drop to split stations, priority picking, pick for shipper (container), etc. Usually, no single approach is the best. Hence, a flexible combination of approaches, as part of the integrated warehouse operations, which are in tune with the company’s objectives and customer requirements should be put in place. Sometimes, when multiple tools with their own software are chosen, a WCS (warehouse control system), if not included in the WMS, may be used to coordinate the various systems. Again, the WMS is key to receive the information and determine what picking approaches should be used to trigger for the various order situations.
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