Automation of online store warehouse processes: Audiomania experience - Part 2

[In the first part of the story we wrote about how automation of warehouse processes in Audimania began: we described the problems we faced before automation, the tasks we set for ourselves, and how we (by trial and error) managed to solve issues of storekeeper equipment and the creation of its own warehouse management system.

Read more about the know-how of our system, the logic of the organization of warehouses, the results of the project, as well as what advantages our final customers have gained from the reorganization.]
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Solution (continued)

Warehouse organization logic

After writing the software and solving the problem of equipping employees, it is time to look at the warehouse from the point of view of the logic of its organization. At the moment in the warehouse of Audiomania you can find several types of storage tanks.

First of all - boxes for trivia. Next come trays for larger goods (boxes and trays differ only in size - the boxes are smaller, the trays are larger). We used the boxes and trays earlier as well - the principle by which goods fall into these containers has now changed. Previously, the names of the goods were pasted on them (sometimes separated by a comma), now the trays and boxes received labels with bar codes. At the same time, the use of boxes and trays has become strictly regulated - now only one item can be stored in each of them. In order to achieve this, it was necessary at the same time to check the compliance of the labels and the contents of the containers: in parallel, inconsistencies were identified and eliminated (some products should not be in a specific container or, on the contrary, lacked something).

One of our know-how, which we used in the process of reorganizing the storage of goods in boxes, was that after sticking labels on a box, the goods were not transferred, but simply “placed” in accordance with the system. Thanks to this, we were able to avoid labeling ourselves (small in size) products that we store in boxes - unlike our system, not a single ready-made warehouse management solution known to us works with products without an individual label. It is worth noting that the use of individual bags for goods (it is used to solve this problem) is unprofitable, for example, if we are talking about inexpensive radio components.

For the sections of the warehouse wall to which the boxes are fastened, we introduced horizontal and vertical numbering, which speeds up the search for the place where the box is located (at present, the wall with the boxes continues to be completed as needed). The logic of storing trays in stock is as follows: they are placed on the racks and are characterized by a combination of parameters: the rack number + the number of the “place” on the rack (there is conventionally one rack for all boxes).


Warehouse wall under the boxes

The third type of storage tanks - shelves on the shelves. On any shelf can be any number of different products. In addition, each shelf is one “place”, and the location of the goods is tied to it. As a result, the build process looks like this:

• The employee scans the barcode from the wall and gets a new task on the smartphone.
• The system shows the location number, name, quantity of goods and - if necessary - a photo (a photo of a product turns out to be very useful if it comes to vinyl records - finding the right cover photo is much easier and faster than by the artist’s name and album name) .
• First a place is scanned, then a product. Scanning of a place is necessary because often the same article can lie in different places (including neighboring ones) - it is important to make sure not only that this is the right product, but also that it is taken from the right place. As for scanning goods, in the case of goods from boxes and trays, the goods themselves are not scanned (since they are not supplied with individual stickers), but a bar code pasted on the box or tray (since there is always only one item number in the box / tray) .

It looks like the contents of one of the boxes

With such an approach, it is simply impossible to take something or not. This storage system literally allows warehouse workers not to “look for a product”, but to “collect an order”. Interestingly, the employees began to call this process “assembly” just after the reorganization of the warehouse - before that they used the word “search”, which was completely untrue. After the introduction of these innovations, the average time to start assembling an order (from the moment a request is “taken” - its receipt by a warehouse employee's smartphone - until the first product is found) is from 30 seconds to 1 minute (the assembly time itself varies greatly depending on the size of the product and the amount units of goods in the order). At the same time, the employee spends most of this time getting to the right place.

After the necessary goods are found, it (in the case of sending outside Moscow, for example) must be packaged. To do this (based on the parameters of delivery of the goods), the system generates the necessary set of documents and an identification sticker on the box. A warehouse employee packs the goods in a box, sticks a sticker with a barcode, scans it, after which the system tells him where to put the packaged goods. Further shipment of goods to the transport company is carried out, as usual assembly - only instead of specific goods this time boxes with orders. If we have an established information exchange with the delivery service, then at the stage of labeling a label on a box, we generate and print the barcode of the transport company. As a result, we optimize not only our internal processes, but also the receiving and processing of parcels from the transport workers we work with - the availability of their barcode on the parcel and information about it in their information system seriously speeds up the delivery of goods.


Bulky goods placed on shelves

Assembly and dispatch of warehouse tasks are not limited. Receipt of goods is an equally important part of his work. In order to avoid overlaps, inconsistencies and confusion at the reception, we have the so-called “undecomposed zone”, where we monitor the conformity of the goods of the supplier’s consignment note, labeling and further distribution to storage locations. At the same time, now the “responsible” employee in the undecomposed area is required only at the stage of label labeling (here it is necessary to carefully check the conformity of the goods to the label being pasted). The rest of the warehouse workers do the work, making a mistake in which is very difficult.

It is important to note that each action of each employee is recorded on video. As a result, we get a lot of tools for the formation of KPI warehouse workers and can explore the bottlenecks of the entire system: monitor the processes that take the most time for employees, and work on them. For example, if we see that one of the employees takes one or another operation longer than the others, we can conduct additional training and increase its productivity.

User view

For the convenience of users, the site of the Audiomania online store shows not only the status of availability of goods, but also specific stores where it is.


Information about the availability of goods through the user's eyes

If we do not have the goods at the moment, but there is data from the supplier about the delivery time, the product is assigned the status “Expected”, and you can see exactly when it should arrive at the warehouse and in what quantity. Such goods can be paid in advance.


If there is no product at the moment, you can specify exactly when it will come to us.

results

The whole project of optimizing the work of the warehouse took us three months, and during this time we managed to achieve a significant increase in the speed and quality of the operations performed in the warehouse. In particular:

• Managed to minimize paper workflow. Of course, from the need to print documents, invoices, etc. it's impossible to leave, but automation allows you to significantly reduce the number of various pieces of paper. For the internal work of the warehouse, paper documents are not required at all.
• Regrading and other problems now occur only in 0.1% of cases. To bring this number to absolutely zero is impossible due to the human factor: no one is immune from mistakes, but we have very few of them and they are very quickly corrected.
• Efficient and fast training of new employees. Previously, the training of a new warehouse worker could take considerable time, and people began to work in full force not immediately. Now, all the preparation takes from half an hour to 1 hour, after which the employee is fully ready to effectively and productively carry out his tasks.
• Increase staff efficiency through a system of priorities. You no longer need to collect and pack orders that will be sent only tomorrow, as a result - in parallel with the increase in efficiency - the load on employees is distributed more efficiently.
• Reducing the build time of orders. Now in Audiomania, orders are collected 10 times faster than before the introduction of automation.
• Record order processing time is 4 minutes 59 seconds. This is the minimum time from the moment the client clicks the "place an order" button until the package is ready to be sent.

As you can see, the result was worth the effort. Automation of warehouse processes allowed us to more effectively help our customers. We hope that our experience was interesting for you. Thank you for your attention and do not forget to subscribe to our blog !