Zone picking system for Farnell enhances efficiency and service level
Farnell is a world leading distributor of electronic, electrical, industrial, and maintenance, repair & operations (MRO) products. Their business model revolves around providing a high service level, getting the right products to the right customers at the right time. Farnell works through multiple sales channels, including an extensive web shop.
To handle significant growth Farnell opened a second European Distribution Center in Liège, Belgium where they store over 100.000 SKUs. Farnell selected a Zone Picking System with a throughput of 1.600 order totes per hour to prepare customer orders. This highly structured order picking process provides them with high productivity, high pick accuracy and short cycle times, which are key in Farnell's business model. Redundancy ('resilience') was one of the major design criteria to guarantee next-day delivery.
Orders are picked in 28 zones. Nearly half of all orders are picked in a single zone. Therefore orders (totes) are launched from each zone, and not from a central release point. This has improved lead time for both regular and rush orders considerably. For the rest of the orders totes travel from zone to zone until an order is complete. Operators receive pick instructions via RF terminals. Within each zone, trolleys are used to minimize walking. At Inspection, a percentage of the totes as well as specific orders are checked. After Inspection, totes are sorted to the packing area by an automated sortation system, where orders are consolidated (if necessary) and packed into bags or cartons. Finally, shipping sortation of orders by courier service takes place using a POSISORTER sliding shoe sorter.