Replenishment Options
OVERVIEW
The replenishment system is DATASCOPE WMS has two main modules. One is a simple replenishment systems to move stock from a bulk area to a pick face location. The second module is a full directed replenishment systems.
SIMPLE Replenishment Module
This module has been designed to monitor your pick face bin locations and to automatically generate replenishment orders based on the min, reorder and max levels of each pick face bin. This module has a number of important settings that allows your replenishments to generate based on one of five rules. Some of these rules simply replenish the bin based on actual stock levels while others replenishment the bin to a level that includes future demand. This demand can be run off released picking slips or sales order lines in SYSPRO with a ship date before a set cut off.
The replenishment orders are automatically generated and display on a PC based review screen and on the scanners on the warehouse or factory floor. A time tolerance can be set to turn any line red if the order has not been actioned withion a set number of hours. The replenishment staff move through the warehouse selecting replenishment lines on the scanner. This lines are presented to the user in date and time sequence so that the oldest replenishment orders are actioned first. A single step or two stage replenishment can be processed on the scanner. The single step screen expects the user to fetch the bulk stock and scan it directly into the pick face. this is most often used where the bulk location is above or close to the pick face. The two stage process is used where the replenishment user builds up a pallet of multiple SKU’s in the bulk area and then transfers the full pallet to the pick face area and off loads the products into the various pick face bins.
All transactions are recorded for KPI reporting.
Direct Replenishment Module
The directed replenishment module is far more complex. This module starts with a custom-built calculation which is dropped into the core DATASCOPE WMS software. As such, the actual rules to generate replenishment orders are endless. We can easily build advanced replenishment calculations that are different by warehouse or warehouse area or stock code product class. Each generated replenishment order writes to a replenishment master table for execution.
Much like the Sales order wave releasing screen, a review screen allows the replenishment manager to review replenishment lines in logical groupings and release these in waves. For instance, the manager may review all replenishment lines at 3 pm in the afternoon. First, all lines are Auto Allocated. this process applies the preset stock allocation rules to find the most optimal stock to reserve. Once the lines have reserved stock from the bulk locations, the screen can be filtered by logical grouping before releasing in waves. For example, the manager may sort the replenishment orders by bulk bin Area, Zone, or even Aisle and then release multiple picking slips for each grouping. So if the release were done at the Aisle level, we would end up with a separate picking slip by Aisle.
Replenishment staff are allocated picking slips and move through the warehouse processing the replenishment picks. Each picking slip is picked onto a pallet or set of pallets and moved to the pick face area or the destination warehouse (the demand may have come from a pick face, another warehouse or a factory location). This picking process applies full stock reservation logic, which manages stock availability in the bulk bin locations and ensures that the stock is not taken for a customer or another replenishment order.
Picked replenishment stock is moved to the destination area (Warehouse or pick face) and the standard replenishment put away is used to scan the stock into the destination bins.