Optimal Warehouse Picking – SA Power Networks Case Study

As the state’s electricity distributor, SA Power Networks’ role is to build, maintain and upgrade the poles, wires and substations that deliver power to around 1.7 million customers.

Case Scenario

SA Power Network’s central Adelaide warehouse stores all materials essential for network construction and maintenance. Regional depots place orders for parts and components every day that are sourced from the warehouse and despatched via trucks. The number of materials that need to be picked off the shelves varies daily and can result in significant staff overtime if demand is high.

As explained by Andrew Dilena, Logistics and Operations Manager, “[the employees] could see how big the pick day was and knew they’d be working overtime. They got to the point where they were sick of working overtime because they were worn out. That’s not a good thing for a worker because when you’re fatigued you are more likely to hurt yourself and make errors.”

The Solution

Daitum worked with Andrew and his team to configure their software to intelligently group the day’s orders such that orders with overlapping material requirements can be picked at the same time, subject to despatch sequencing constraints, weight and volume. Doing so significantly reduces the distance the person picking needs to traverse to collect all materials.

Daitum’s SaaS solution captures all the relevant business rules and constraints and allows the user to easily influence how the groupings are generated. Each day, the orders required to be picked are imported from the ERP. The tool captures the necessary data from the orders and upon optimising, groups the items and materials from the various orders.

The Results

Daitum’s solution is used first thing every morning to generate the groupings for the day that result in minimum distance to be travelled by the staff doing the picking. To date, the use of the solution has reduced the distance travelled by up to 25 percent.

This implementation of the solution has also reduced the amount of times the staff need to access the overhead storage, where items are kept in bulk. By optimising the pickface locations and reorganising them the solution has reduced the need to access overhead storage by 32 percent, once again adding to the improved efficiency in the warehouse.

According to Mr Dilena, “Daitum’s Order Picking Optimisation Tool has made instant changes to our warehouse.” He believes that Daitum’s solution constitutes a key part of workplace efficiency measures that allowed SA Power Networks to reduce overtime despite a small reduction in workforce over the last 18 months.