While the demand for increased quality of convenience in order fulfillment increases, there’s a hands-free solution whose popularity continues to rise: pick-by-light.
Pick to light uses light devices mounted on flow rack, workstations, or mobile carts to guide operators to the correct location and quantities of the items needed to fulfil an order.
How Does Pick-by-Light Work?
Retail
Pick-by-light allows picking operators to locate and pack a customer’s orders after they’ve created an online shopping list on the store’s website. The customer then visits the store to collect the packaged items.
Velocity
Pick to light has commonly been used to facilitate operations needing to move and sort high velocity items. This isn’t a requirement of the technology; however, it speaks to the speed of picking that pick to light systems offer.
There are many factors to consider when calculating your potential pick speed: lines/order, units/line, walking distance, scanning requirements, etc.
Regardless of those requirements, PTL has proven to be a faster technology than traditional pick methods (paper, RF scanning), and has an accuracy rate of 99.5%. It is important to understand these factors that drive the process to not over/underestimate the expected operator’s productivity. PTL operations can have rates of 350 lines per man-hour or more, compared to voice picking in the same applications run 300 lines per man-hour or less
Production Line
The operator can easily locate parts for assembly inside the inventory room with the help of LED signals. This collection may be done before or in the middle of the manufacturing procedure.
Ease of Use
Peak seasons drive temporary labor, it’s the nature of the business. With this, operations do not have the luxury to train employees for multiple weeks and get them used to standard operating practices or cumbersome technologies.
Pick to Light allows operations supervisors to insert new operators at will. Scan the carton, look for the light, pick the quantity, hit the button. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.
Electronic Shelf Labels with Pick-by-Light
Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL) are typically used to display product prices in an automated manner. Still, they are more than just displaying prices—these digital price tags now come with the hands-free capability to quickly and easily find items that need to be picked. This wireless technology functions along with LEDs and is confirmed by buttons to enable pick-by-light.
Newton’s Pick-by-Light
SOLUM offers electronic shelf labels that are now backed-up by the all-new Newton system, providing capabilities that are far from what ordinary ESLs can do. With Newton, your operations will experience a smoother, faster, and more streamlined operation. Here are Newton’s top 6 pick-by-light benefits!
For more information about SOLUM’s Pick by Light system, contact us today and visit us at http://www.solumesl.com.
Shelf Labels 