Distributor "Picks" LANSA for Writing Warehouse Automation Apps

Published: September 12, 2006

by Lori Piotrowski

For many businesses, the bottom line doesn't always tell the whole story of why a company's results aren't where they should be. However, it can indicate that a line item further up may need some attention. That was the case with one of Brewers Distributor Ltd's distribution facilities in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. Brewers Distributor (BDL) is a wholesale distributor of beer and collector of returnable, refillable and recyclable beer containers within the western Canadian provinces, and it operates as a cost center for its two shareholders--Molson and Labatt, Canada's two major breweries.

BDL management knew that this facility experienced difficulty in reaching its productivity targets. When that facility's product-picking and load-out processes were examined later for inefficiencies, BDL found several areas that could be modified to minimize waste and personnel downtime to improve that all important bottom line. That decision alone is saving the company nearly $500,000 per year.

Several years ago at its New Westminster Distribution Center (DC), BDL installed a manual scale process that was designed to reduce picking errors by measuring the picked pallet weight and comparing it to the weight of the pallet as calculated by the system. After an order had been picked, the picker would deliver it to one of the six manual scales, each manned by a loss-prevention officer. The pickers experienced considerable downtime as they would wait for the order to be weighed, then manually wrapped, and labeled before they would start their next picking assignment. If the order fell within the 9-pound range of the order's calculated weight, it was wrapped, labeled, and staged for shipping. For each assignment the picker was idle at the manual scale for an average of 15 minutes. In a facility that puts through 1,300 to 1,700 pallets per day, that amounts to a lot of unproductive time.

Andrew Hobbs, Manager of IT Applications at BDL, explained how the company began its automation project: "We wanted to expand on the scale concept and introduce a degree of automation. The project team spent a lot of time on conceptual design and process, and once we landed on the automated line design we had to find a vendor who could help us to physically build and automate these lines. Samuel Strapping Systems partnering with LM Equipment, both based in Vancouver, Canada, helped us with the initial concept design and then built our production lines. Where previously our pickers would bring product to scale and wait for weighing, we wanted them to be able to drop off the pallet and immediately start on the next order. This would eliminate the wait, or unproductive time, from their schedule."

Fig. 1 -- The Load Planning Dispatch system

He continued, "We also wanted to put control of the workflow into the hands of the DC managers and supervisors and give them better visibility to the amount of work left in the system and better tools to manage that work." In the old system, for example, pick slips were printed in advance, manually sorted by priority, and placed on a table for pickers to retrieve. The problem with this system was that some pickers would leaf through the stack of pick slips and take the easier-looking assignments, taking more than one pick assignment at a time and disrupting the priority sort. Part of the automation project involved building a pick-slip dispensing system where pick slips are stored as image files and dispensed one at a time to pickers through a card-access system. The picker cannot have more than one picking assignment at any time and cannot receive another assignment until the current assignment is completed and placed on one of the automated lines.

To accomplish these goals, Hobbs returned to LANSA technology, which Brewers had used several years previously to build a Web-based ordering system. Webb said, "We had an investment in LANSA technology and realized that there was more functionality in our LANSA-built application that we hadn't yet taken advantage of that we could apply to this new project. Internally, we don't like to have a proliferation of technology - we prefer to stick to a fewer number of products and solutions because it's easier to support fewer. If we had picked yet one more technology, such as Microsoft, then we would have been bringing in new skill sets."

Hobbs continued, "We took the new process well beyond just automated lines by integrating these new production lines with LANSA Windows and LANSA Integrator. We developed and built three major pieces of the system in LANSA: the Dispatch application, the Load Plan, and the interface for the Process Control Coordinator (PCC), the individual who oversees the operations of the automated lines and deals with exceptions."

BDL uses the dispatch system within JD Edwards World v7.3, but they opted to rewrite that in LANSA to make the screens easier for the dispatchers to use. The rewritten system allows dispatchers to select customer orders for dispatch using a variety of filter options. Upon dispatch each order is run through a Pick Slip Management System that divides the order into the number of pallets required for shipping. Each pallet is a single picking assignment. An order may be broken down into one or more pallets.

Brewers realized that rewriting the dispatch system in RPG (within the JD Edwards application) would limit the users' productivity. Hobbs explained that "users would be jumping between different screens in JDE and we wanted to give dispatchers just one screen to do their job. (Figure 1 displays the Load Planning Dispatch system.) The LANSA screens let them put all the data on one screen and move around with tabs rather than running multiple sessions or opening and closing screens to get all the data they needed." He also mentioned that the JDE screens are still available, but aren't seeing much use.

The Load Plan application was built in Visual LANSA. This new application replaced a spreadsheet application that required several manual steps. Once orders are dispatched, this application lets the managers/supervisors see each order at a pallet level, where they can sequence the work dispensed at the kiosk in priority and change those priorities on the fly as events, such as availability of trucks, unfold. This system allows supervisors, not the pickers, to determine the order of pick slips that are released for picking and the priority in which orders are filled.

Fig. 2 -- The pallet status on the line control software

After the picker has an assignment, he picks the order and brings it to one of five available in-feed positions on any one of three available automated lines. Here the picker drives the pallet onto the in-feed lift. Each pallet board is pre-weighed and that weight along with a board ID is encoded on a label that is affixed to the board. As the board is placed on the lift, a scanner reads the board label. The picker then scans a bar code on the pick slip, which ties the board ID to the data, such as customer name, address, and order details, on the pick slip. This allows the process controller to know what is on each pallet even before it begins its journey through the automated line.

Hobbs added these details about how the process worked: "Samuel Strapping built software to control the movement of pallets through the automated line; this software interfaces to the BDL Warehouse Automation System (WAS) through the use of LANSA Integrator. The line control software does not move the pallet unless the BDL WAS instructs it to do so. For example, at the weigh-scale position, if a pallet does not fall within the acceptable weight tolerance we need to hold that pallet at the scale, it reports the details of the variance to the PCC, and allows the PCC to either reject the pallet, make adjustments (inventory shortages etc) to the pallet, or override the reported variance before the pallet advances to the next station on the line. In this example, Samuel's software captures the data on the bar code, sends it to the BDL WAS with the pallet weight from the scale via LANSA Integrator, and the BDL WAS takes the data, evaluates it, and returns an action code--either "hold the position of the pallet until further notice" or "move to next position." (Figure 2 displays pallet status on the line control software.)

Brewers' programmers built a custom LANSA application to give the process controller a visual depiction of pallets moving through the line and any exceptions that occur during the process. The process controller is able to see errors at each level of the line and can drill down to get details on each pallet to determine the problem and its solution. For example, he can move a pallet along that is underweight because a portion of the order wasn't in stock. In such a case, the weight is recalculated so the pallet will fall within the weight limits. (Figure 3 shows how a process controller will view a pallet.)

After determining what equipment would be required to move the warehouse to an automated stage, LANSA training refreshed the skills of several IT developers and four new developers were trained in LANSA fundamentals and then in Visual LANSA Hobbs commented, "Now that they have used LANSA, none want to go back to RPG, which is fine by me."

LANSA Professional Services was engaged to mentor the developers, but BDL's staff did the designing and prototyping. Hobbs said, "Services helped out with suggestions and sometimes we had them write certain pieces according to our design, mostly with the dispatch and load plan screens. We told them exactly what we were looking for: a system that would allow us to search for records with different criteria and retrieve that information. Our design called for each screen in the dispatch and load-plan applications to be broken into three windows (selection criteria, statistics, and selected records). We needed help in this as it was the most complicated part of the application."

Fig. 3 -- Shows how how a process controller will view a pallet.

The BDL WAS runs on the IBM i5 550 with multiple PC workstations connected via Citrix servers for use by dispatchers, load planners, process-control coordinators, as well as managers, supervisors, customer service representatives, and company directors.

Brewers began developing its warehouse automation project in December 2005 and began to roll out the new automation system in mid-April. The manual scales were phased out gradually over a six-week period. Hobbs explained, "We rolled out in stages because of the high degree of change we were introducing to the warehouse. It would have been too hard for everyone to digest this much change all at one time."

He continued, "We took away manual weighing, wrapping, and labeling of product and replaced it with an automated line process. Pickers drop off a pallet, scan it onto the line, and, once it's on the line, they go get the next order. Individual security guards have been eliminated, replaced by three automated lines and one process controller."

The warehouse automation system is already improving BDL's bottom line. Said Hobbs, "We always had trouble measuring productivity, but the automated process can monitor how long it takes for a pick assignment to be completed. We capture the elapsed time between the picker getting the pick slip and dropping it off on the automated line. BDL will be integrating this data with another internal application that provides an engineered standard regardubg the expected pick time for a particular assignment. This helps give management a true measure of picker productivity, which is valuable from a performance management point of view. This facility went from a system where they couldn't effectively control work being done and had no statistics on productivity to one where they now have concrete evidence of who the top performers are."

Concrete figures provide even more details. Said Hobbs, "The capital required to complete this project was $1.3 million and the annual savings is projected at $450,000. We'll see payback in about 3 years. Beyond that, the ability to effectively measure picker productivity and manage performance based on data collected in the warehouse automation system is something that is not yet fully captured from a hard savings perspective, but over time will become evident."

Maybe the bottom line can now tell the whole story.

Lori Piotrowski is public relations manager for LANSA. She has worked in the IT industry for the last 10 years, making the move from architectural photography and construction journalism. On the side, you'll find her teaching Spanish at a local college. You can reach her at lori.piotrowski@lansa.com