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In this example of a Cirrus Warehouse Control System, the process begins in the Pick and Pass lanes. At this Southern California Distribution Center there are 3 Pick and Pass lanes and each lane has three levels where product is stored for picking and packing. Here’s how they work; A container is sent down the line and as it’s label is scanned, the Warehouse Control System directs the conveyors to carry the container to the zone that holds the next product designated for that container.

Once a container has been completely packed it is diverted to the Spiral Lifts where they are directed to the Tapers and the Scale. There are two lanes that end in manned tapers, after which the lanes merge and then head towards the scale.

Prior to reaching the scale, the label is scanned again to compare its actual weight with the weight recorded in the WCS. The assumed weight is derived off the weight of the product that was supposed to be packed in it and also takes into account the tare weight of the container.  If these two match, the container is sent down the line to the merge lanes and eventually the appropriate shipping lane. If these two do not match, the container will be diverted to the QA Zone as you will see later in this video.

Once leaving the scale, the container’s next trip takes it through the conveyor merge.  This merge has 8 lines merging into a single conveyor. Each line is programmed to stack containers together and then merge with stacked containers from the other lines. This is a high-speed process.

Once merged the containers pass under a label scanner that scans every side of each container to ensure label placement does not impact it’s ability to be sorted into the shipping lanes.

If there are any issues for a container like a mismatch on the weight or a bad label, the container will next be diverted to the QA Zone where it will be hand evaluated for its accuracy, otherwise it will continue to the appropriate shipping lane where ultimately it will be loaded onto trucks and sent for delivery.

Unlike other lists, we are going to start with the single, most important task that needs to be done.

Train your employees. It is shown time and again that companies that do not invest in the thorough training of their employees experience easily circumvented human errors. A small investment in the employees understanding of the entire warehouse operation will show net returns of more up time, less human error and an easier transition as realities in the warehouse require movement of operators from one task to another. Ultimately, in this modern supply chain era, employees need to be versatile and capable of wearing multiple hats.

Evaluate your supply chain’s growth proactively to determine when it is time to upgrade the system to support changes in volume. Nothing is worse than being prepared for 3,000 containers per day growing to 6,000 and not being able to meet the need. You should always be capable of 30% more volume within the warehouse than the current expected volume.

Acquire or leverage a Warehouse Control System to ensure proper slotting, size and weight of product. Don’t make employees travel a lot to do their job or bend over to pick up heavier containers. There is a direct correlation between product placement in the warehouse and the volume per day a warehouse can handle. Reduce the travel and improved weight consideration increases volume and reduces human resource costs.

Consider implementing voice-pick solutions in your warehouse. Voice picking reduces the amount of time required to read and respond to picking orders and shows an immediate uptick in employee productivity. Voice picking speeds the whole process up as fast as you can speak.

Preventative maintenance on hardware and tools is an often overlooked, yet proven-to-be valuable step in the day-to-day operations of the warehouse. Take weekly looks at your critical points in the warehouse so hardware issues are discovered before they become an issue rather than after.

We hope this list was helpful for you. Please contact us if you have any questions.

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.