Packing and the assistant

Packing closes the picking loop: lines go into parcels, orders get new states, and units that could not be packed are recorded instead of disappearing.

Two views

Batch Picking — lines in bulk, across all the wave’s orders. Good for collecting goods in one pass.
Order Picking — order by order. The scanner only works in this view.

List columns: Packed, Out of Stock, Quantity, Photo, Product Name, Unit Price, Product Number, Manufacturer Number, EAN, Bin location.

Two marking modes

The settings decide what the operator marks:

Select products that are out of stock — only what could not be packed is marked, and everything else counts as packed,
Select packed products — the reverse: what was packed is marked, and an order is complete only once everything is marked.

→ Packing settings

The scanner

In Order Picking a barcode marks the line automatically. The module reports the following situations:

the code is not on the list,
the product has already been fully scanned,
the line belongs to another warehouse, which the module names; such a line is packed there, not here.

The scanner needs the browser window focused and signals when it is inactive.

Order states

Next moves orders into the states configured for complete and incomplete orders.

The confirmation mode decides whether the changes run immediately or wait for confirmation in the summary. After processing, the module shows a Packing summary with the number of orders whose state changed and those that failed, together with a choice: finish the operation anyway (Complete operation) or leave it open (Leave in progress).

If the operator has no privilege to change order states, packing carries on and the module simply reports that the states were left as they were.

Printing

The packing bar prints the Pick List, Packing Slips and the Current Packing Slip for the order on screen. Printing the pick list can also set an order state — useful when the printout means “handed over to the warehouse”.

Pick-to-cart

The packing assistant turns picking into pick-to-cart: while the wave is planned, every order is given a place on the picking cart, sized as half a shelf, a whole shelf or several according to the size of the order, so that goods arrive at the packing bench already sorted per order.

Carts are defined as warehouse elements of type Picking cart on the Elements tab.

The allocation is based on thresholds: with item counts the thresholds decide alone; with product dimensions they cover the lines whose product has no usable dimensions. The fill factor states how much of a slot’s volume goods can really occupy, so that the default of 0.6 treats a slot as full at 60%.

In every mode each order of the wave has an assigned place that can be checked: the cart front view on the picking screen shows which order is on which slot.

The same front view is displayed next to the product while a quantity is being scanned. The dialogue that asks for the quantity covers the picking screen, including the cart, and the quantity and its destination are entered in one step, so the cart view is part of that dialogue.

Voice guidance

The route and the actions can be read out loud. → Voice picking

Which box each piece goes in

Packing an order and packing its boxes are two different jobs. With Guide the packer box by box switched on, the bench works one carton at a time, and with the closing confirmations set to ask only when something is missing, a whole order can be packed without touching the screen. → Packing into boxes