At Cirrus Tech, our Warehouse Management System (WMS) is designed to help eliminate this problem altogether! Our system provides real-time order verification ensuring that the carton contents are correct for that order through the use of an in-line scale! Picture it! Our system knows the expected weight of each order based on the items picked. If the box is outside of the user-specified weight tolerance, it will be diverted for an inspection! Of course, this method only applies where there is a measurable difference in weight and not if products are similar in shape and size or for example, only different in color.

We have found that the majority of companies use the flexibility of our system to specify certain QC criteria. For instance, if you want to check behind a new employee’s work for 2 weeks, you can specify to have those boxes/cartons diverted to your QC area automatically. Or in other cases, customers have decided that they want to verify every Nth carton. In this case, you get to decide (as a business practice) that you want to verify a certain number of cartons per wave, order, day, week, etc.

Quality Control Screens

Within our WMS, we use multiple screens to control the QC portion of your system. The first screen is the QC Setup screen. This allows you, the customer, to be in control of your own QC settings and update them as you deem necessary. The QC Setup screen looks like this:

This example shows user settings for a certain weight tolerance and checking orders for the operator(s) specified.

Below is an example of a main QC screen. This particular example operates by LPN. When the carton arrives at the QC Station, the operator simply has to scan the carton’s LPN and the order information will appear. There are several options here for handling cases at QC.

These options are highly customizable by customer, but the intention is to give you an example of how some of our customers utilize this feature of the WMS!

Labor Management works by storing your database of standards for every key task. For each associate, the actual times for task completion are monitored in real time and compared to the standards. Cirrus Tech’s Labor Management suite uses modern engineering techniques to set the time standards based on distance, time, and other factors. Employees at all levels receive immediate feedback on their performance.

Forecast Labor Needs

Labor Planning utilizes historical data to estimate future receipts, and then optimizes the balance of overtime, regular and temporary labor needed to meet demand. With accurate forecasts, managers can improve labor efficiency, reduce overtime hours and increase c customer service levels, even through seasonal fluctuations.

Successful labor management coincides with change management as well. Employees will have a clear sense of any changes or updates to the system thorough training so that their performance can continue to meet and exceed the standard that has been set.

Benefits

Benefits of the Labor Management system include:

• Measures productivity
• Compares performance across functional areas
• Rewards those who exceed performance standards
• Identifies bottlenecks and obstacles
• Monitors all productive and non-productive time
• Monitors performance levels in real time

Voice software enables your workers to do their job hands-free and eyes-up. The difference can be dramatic: many companies report faster pick rates, fewer mistakes, and improved workplace safety after deploying a voice solution.

Because workers are prompted and must respond correctly, Cirrus’ Voice Pick solution ensures that errors almost never happen. It’s like having a “manager on the shoulder” of each worker. In fact, you will find that new employees get up to standard performance levels more quickly with Cirrus’ Voice Pick solution, and your supervisors will spend less one-on-one time to get them there.

Cirrus’ Voice Pick solution includes voice recognition that is “Powered by Voxware.” Voxware pioneered voice picking software for the warehouse, and the technology we license from them has proven to deliver the highest recognition accuracy in the most demanding industrial environments.

The Traffic Cop element of Cirrus Tech’s Warehouse Control System (WCS) is designed to optimize the efficiency of your warehouse equipment, including AGV’s (automatic guided vehicles), cranes, carousels and more! Traffic Cop manages this process by setting up routes and assigned tasks associated with particular zones.

System Supervisor from Cirrus Tech gives you that control. Notification of problems is performed both visually and audibly.

This sorter screen is designed to give you an idea of what your specific screens will look like inside the Cirrus framework. This particular screen is showing a report, cases per minute, start, stop and reset controls as well as the color legend for decoding what the different conveyor statuses mean. Of course your screen will be specific to your system. You can see that the red part of the conveyor indicates that there has been a fault while the green conveyor sections indicate that the system is running. Other statuses include paused, off, force run and line full.

System Supervisor is a comprehensive warehouse monitoring and diagnostic package that provides you with a quick and complete overview of your material handling system through continuous surveillance.

System Supervisor is a graphical representation of your warehouse system. It gives you a live, up-to-date status for all aspects of your warehouse operations. You can watch boxes travel down conveyors and if any problems arise, conveyors will change color depending on its status.

System Supervisor immediately notifies designated personnel of abnormalities in your warehouse operation. Diagnostics and help pages enable users to rectify the situation in a timely manner. System Supervisor means the difference between you running the warehouse and the warehouse running you. System Supervisor can be configured to connect to all your warehouse equipment, including but not limited to conveyors, carousels, cranes, pick-to-light systems, forklift trucks, and AGV’s.

Clear, easy-to-interpret graphics make System Supervisor easy to understand and easy to use. Within each of the detail screens, you have the option of clicking on sections of the conveyor to retrieve data about that section and its current status.

The beauty of System Supervisor is that it can be catered to your company’s specific needs. Generally speaking, your system will provide you with an overview screen and a series of drill-down screens that illustrate each aspect of your warehouse system. Some of the add-on capabilities include:

• Scanner Statistics
• Maintenance Mode
• Out of Service Options
• Alarm Monitor
• LIVE PLC Statistics Monitoring and Reporting
• Functionality to control conveyors

The lower part of the screen displays the accumulated divert count for all the divert lanes for each month. At the end of the year, this information will be reset, unless otherwise specified by the customer.

The Report Manager is used to select a specific report for output using the Crystal Report Engine to generate visual and hardcopy reports. The report engine within the Framework takes the parameters of what information is to be included in the report, and
passes them to Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports then takes over the tasks of retrieving, formatting, printing and exporting the data.

Here’s a look at the Report Manager screen:

The Report Manager screen is designed to be interactive with users, in that they can select the day (and/or range) and the time (and/or range) for a specific report. The parameters for each report will be based on that report’s output. Custom reports will be defined during the design phase of your project!

REPORTS

The Cirrus Framework incorporates a market leading desktop reporting and analysis tool, Seagate Crystal Reports®. Using a leading third party reporting tool brings state of the art reporting to you and alleviates our report development time. Using this tool, creating reports eliminates software for extracting report data and formatting it for presentation purposes.

The design of reports is done outside the Framework. Reports are created visually using Crystal Reports Designer,taking into consideration your input for both content and appearance. These reports are then invoked from the Framework for display and printing purposes using our built-in report engine.

Cirrus Label Supervisor works closely with the PLC controls to ensure a smooth flow through the label application process. A general flow through looks like this:

• Product is metered through an induction point and assigned a tracking ID within the PLC.
• Product is automatically scanned to acquire either a product Id (SKU) or container ID.
• The scanned information is looked up within a local database (if previous information was downloaded) or a telegram is sent to a listening agent where the proper label information requirements are obtained.
• Download variable label data to print/apply machine.
• Automatically print/apply container shipping label to product.
• The product is automatically scanned outbound to verify that the print/apply process
• occurred normally.
• If all checks are passed, permit normal product to pass. Stop or divert problem product
• and generate an alarm.
• Upload print/apply confirmation to host system.

Cirrus Pick to Light module is the fast-est operator-based picking strategy available to execute broken case quan-tity order fulfillment operations. Ideal for team-based approaches like zone picking, the Pick to Light solution in-creases the pick rate productivity, accu-racy and cost efficiency by reducing the walk time, eliminating the reading er-rors and simplifying the task through-out the pick process. Lights can be arranged either horizon-tally or vertically. This increases accu-racy and productivity, especially where very high picks per SKU color. Light modules direct the next pick, and LED displays show the quantity to pick. Supervisory administrators may dy-namically change zone assignments or test predictive models against antici-pated work. Workload balancing for optimal performance is the objective when zone boundaries or personnel as-signments are adjusted. Speed, accuracy, and security are the top features provided by Cirrus’ Pick to Light Module. Specific triggers or diag-nostic data may be logged and alerts sent to your staff in an email, page, or any other popular format. Cirrus’ Pick to Light module also exports data. Performance reports may be ex-ported to another format as a complete file. Specific data may be exported as a comma delimited text file for use with other applications such as Excel, Crystal Reports, Access, etc.

SCREENS

Cirrus’ PTL module is designed to be an all inclusive package that gives you streamlined, cutting edge access to PTL specific screens for both management and accountability of the areas within your warehouse.

REPORTS

Cirrus’ PTL module is designed to be an all inclusive package that gives you streamlined, cutting edge access to PTL specific screens for both management and accountability of the areas within your warehouse.

Vertical Carousels is a leading edge vertical storage system that delivers maximized space utilization, efficiency and productivity in all types of applications, including small parts and tool storage. Vertical Carousels utilizes Put to Light software technology. Some of the benefits of vertical carousel technology include:

•  Increased productivity because walking and searching times are significantly reduced
•  Our industry exclusive dual-chain guidance system provides for maximum cube utilization, multiple carrier depths, multiple carrier clear heights and widths, all in combination with a maximum carrier capacity of up to 2,200 lbs.
• 100% out-of-balance capabilities allow carrier profiling to be dictated by the user and not the restrictions of the carousel capacity.
• Vertical carousels provide significant space savings over traditional static storage
• solutions – the increase in storage density can result in floor space recovery as high as 75%.
• Large shelf capacity to increase productivity and product accessibility
• Dual-motor drive enables greater width capabilities and provides redundancy for continuous up-time
• Our automated storage and retrieval systems are easily interfaced with many warehouse management systems or other host architectures.