Outbound Wave Scheduling for Simultaneous Warehouse Consolidation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing goods outbound methods for large cross-border e-commerce companies face challenges in synchronizing the arrival of goods from multiple warehouses due to varying picking times and transportation delays, leading to inefficient consolidation and capacity waste at the consolidation warehouse.
Innovation Solution
A method that predicts time durations and capacity consumption for each operation link, determines picking start times based on warehouse capacity, and schedules waves accordingly to ensure simultaneous consolidation and reduce capacity waste.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If each warehouse starts picking the order of a wave at the same time, then the picking process can begin immediately without waiting, but the picked goods will arrive at the consolidation warehouse one after another causing long waiting time and idle capacity
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary calculation of picking and transfer times for each warehouse, then determines the optimal picking start time in advance. This allows the consolidation warehouse to receive goods from different picking warehouses simultaneously, eliminating waiting time and idle capacity while ensuring all goods arrive at the same time for immediate processing.
2Reliability
If the consolidation warehouse waits for all goods to arrive before starting seeding and packing, then all goods of the wave can be consolidated, but the waiting time is too long causing idle time for staff and waste of capacity
Solution Approach 1:
The system calculates the optimal picking start times in advance so that goods from different picking warehouses arrive at the consolidation warehouse simultaneously. This eliminates the need for the consolidation warehouse to wait for all goods before starting seeding and packing, ensuring both complete consolidation and continuous operation without idle staff time.
3Ease of operation
If existing scheduling methods are used to deduce picking start time based on expected consolidation time, then a picking schedule can be generated, but the deduced operation time of each link may deviate due to capacity constraints when multiple waves operate simultaneously
Solution Approach 1:
The system incorporates feedback from actual warehouse capacity constraints and operational data to continuously optimize the picking start time calculations. By monitoring the actual performance against the scheduled times, the system adjusts future scheduling to maintain accuracy even when multiple waves operate simultaneously, preventing time deviations while keeping the scheduling process manageable.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for goods outbound includes predicting a time duration corresponding to each wave in each operation link of a goods outbound process, determining a capacity consumption duration of each wave in each operation link based on warehouse capacity information, determining a picking start time of each wave in each picking warehouse based on the time duration corresponding to each wave in each operation link and the capacity consumption duration of each wave in each operation link, and scheduling the picking of each wave based on the picking start time of each wave in each picking warehouse. Full use of the capacity of each link in the order outbound process is possible, waste of outbound capacity is avoided, the backlog of outbound goods is reduced, and the efficiency of order outbound is improved.