Location
addresses are essential and every stock item must be assigned a location
so that it can be readily found.
In addition, the correct addressing of locations enables stock to be located
and picked in an efficient manner.
The warehouse is subdivided into recognisable departments that contain rows of racking. Each rack is further sub divided into bays which are the broken down by level
Zones are recognisable areas within the main warehouse.
They are identified by a 1 to 4 letter prefix reference.
i.e.
W = Goods in warehouse
D = Decorated stock warehouse
F = Incoming decorated
INK = the ink room
EMB = the embroidery department
And so on.
Within all departments
in the warehouse there are aisles designated to the storage of products.
In TOT's addressing system, these are known as
rows and are numbered sequentially from 0 upwards, with assigned
row numbers being dependent on the space available.
Within each row, there are bays which are typically the width of a standard pallet.
Bays are sequentially addressed alphabetically from A onwards, with the omission of the letters I and O, as these letters can be easily confused with the numbers one (1) and zero (0)
The above picture shows two bays annotated.
Within each bay are numbered levels. Levels refer to the vertical position of the bay. Level 1 is on the ground floor, Level 2 next level above, and so on and so forth. The number of possible levels is determined by the height of each location and the physical space available.
Every fixed location in TOT's premises has a location label that contains its unique location address. As you can see in the above example, the location identifier is composed of Zone-Aisle-Bay-Level
So find the above, you would go to the decorated warehouse zone finding row 2, and walk down the aisle to bay B and then looking on the shelf on the 3rd level.
There are some exceptions to the fixed location naming conventions. For example, as stock moves around the warehouse it will often be placed in mobile "containers", such as pallets, trolleys or may be identified as being in process on a particular machine.
Notwithstanding this, all locations can be matched within the Strokeone database with the creative use of the 4 fields used for fixed locations
Stock located onto a pallet also require
a temporary recorded location. To
achieve this, laminated cards
containing the temporary address
are used.
Temporary location identifiers are made up of Two Fields - the first denoting
what processing point the stock is at, and then a numeric suffix to differentiate
the location from others in the same processing point.
Examples of this include:-
Complete + Number.
Temp + Number.
Dropped + Number.
Notes:
This method of addressing needs to be reviewed and rationalised into a finite list of options as part of the process to implement the next version of strokeone
Trolleys
are also a mobile location used for smaller volumes of stock that can
be wheeled around the factory.
Location identifiers for trolleys use 3 fields
Trolley <Colour> <Sequence Number>
For example Trolley Pink 5
These addresses can be visually identified as they have a numbered coloured disc attached to them
Important :
As a trolley is essentially mobile it can be anywhere in TOT's warehouse. Therefore it is only suitable as a temporary location whilst a process is occurring - for example when picking stock. As soon as the process is completed the trolley should be physically placed into a fixed location - and it's contents electronically relocated to the fixed location. By doing this the contents can be easily found.
Similarly, when a job (i.e. the stock contents for a job) is moved to process on a press, for example, AUTO 1 this also gets recorded as a genuine location
Locations are created and maintained in TOT's internal system in System
Preferences. Once created, various sizes of barcode for the location can
be printed
