Article 002 : The Ecommerce Challenge

Ecommerce Operations

The challenge that manufacturers and retailers face today is the inability to cater to both traditional brick and mortar businesses as well as ecommerce operations effectively .They all acknowledge that they have been caught off guard by the rapid growth in ecommerce and are now scrambling to acquire technology platforms that are much more flexible and robust to support a more multifaceted type of operations with a big emphasis on effective strategies in ecommerce fulfilment .

Here are several things to look out for in a technology platform that will allow organizations to ramp up to meet the ecommerce game challenge :

1) Low hanging fruit : Cluster Picking

Use a single cart with multiple containers ( Totes , cartons, cases) to pick multiple order profiles (discrete orders or Batches) . The cart dimensions should be appropriate ( 5 by 2 feet with more than 2 compartments /shelves) to be able to handle multiple orders at a time.

The bigger the cart , the less trips you make to pick the ordered items and this drives up the pick rates significantly .

A mature technology platform already has this picking method as part of their bag of tricks . Look for one that is a more optimized version that can slay high volume small order pick operations by providing higher pick rates .

2) Mid hanging fruit : Digitize your Put wall

Incorporate more automated ‘goods to person’ strategies by digitizing your put wall with put to light and pick to light systems .

The technology platform you select will need to have functionalities that allow pickers using put-to-light or pick-to-light technology to select a few items (2 or 3) from one order and put them into one box for shipping. More robust packing and order streaming functionalities should also be part or your consideration .

3) The Technology Platform : You need to switch to a ‘Best of Breed’ WMS and supercharge it with a DOMS (Distributed Order Management System).

A ‘best of breed’ WMS already is the technology platform of choice for LSPs since the 90ties . This is because they already come chocablock with functionalities that cater for multi warehouse , multi owner , multi sku , multi uom , multi order profiles type of operations .

But despite having a sophisticated ‘best of breed’ WMS , you still will find it challenging to ship everything from a single facility . Here’s where a DOMS comes in . DOMS will allow you to ship from various distribution facilities (including retail stores) all approximately at the same time with high levels of inventory visibility and accuracy .

DOMS accomplish this by allowing the various facilities even ones with different technology platforms to ‘be transparent ‘ to each other .

Transparency in the stock levels across the multiple fulfilment centers allows for a more optimized fulfilment strategy that will drive down fulfilment time as well as transportation costs .

4) Omnichannel friendly technology platform

You don’t need to build a completely new facility immediately (its going to need to be built or acquired and that’s going to keep you out of the game for a while racking up losses in opportunity costs) just to handle ecommerce operations . With the ecommerce business ,there are going to be the occasional massive seasonal volume jumps but most of the year , the volume increase is steady and manageable .

Make do with what you have and with some small tweaks and your existing B2B fulfilment operations can be capable of handling ecommerce operations aswell , for off peak and peak times .

The technology platform you select will have to be flexible enough to cater for shared floor personnel resource allocation , adhoc worker inductions , easy to use for warehouse newbies , hands free voice pick operations and some next level material handling automation suited for high volume , small order picks .

5) ’Pop up’ friendly Technology platform

You are considering testing out ‘pop up fulfillment’ and you need your technology platform to be able to spin up new virtual facilities for short bouts (about 2-3 months) and then spin down .

As you strive to find the best possible ways to fill ecommerce orders from your warehouses and DCs. You might consider opening a smaller, regional facility to manage a portion of the fastest-moving SKUs.

For key uban hubs , you can have the Main DC ship to the smaller pop up DCs and be able to service regional customers in a more labor effective manner while shortening order delivery lead times .

Conclusion:

So there you have it . A fews thing to look out for in a technology platform to be a contender in the Ecommerce game .

Cluster Picking Cart