Web browsers come to the warehouse
Workers at some Sears warehouses can now view their pick orders on a computer screen rather than on a piece of paper.
By Staff -- Logistics Management, 10/1/1999
Forget the lists and clipboards. Today, order pickers at several Sears Roebuck and Co. distribution centers can read their pick orders on a forklift truck-mounted computer using a Web browser. That technology has eliminated the use of paper at these sites while helping the center keep up-to-the-minute tabs on inventory.
Bringing real-time technology to the lift-truck operators has improved both inventory accuracy and communications, reports John Atkins, director of strategic planning for the direct-delivery channel at Sears. The system also has simplified daily operations: "The lift-truck drivers like it because it makes their job easier," Atkins says. "People used to work with a paper list. Now all they have to do is follow it on their screen."
A Do-It-Yourself Application
Sears, Roebuck and Co., based in Hoffman Estates, Ill., earned more than $41 billion in 1998. The company has 85 full-line department stores and more than 2,100 specialized retail locations nationwide. The giant retailer delivers merchandise such as large appliances to 4.5 million customers a year.
Almost two years ago, Sears decided to take advantage of Web technology to manage distribution activities in its direct-store delivery operations. Sears' own information-technology staff developed the application, first testing it in January 1998. It has since been deployed at six of the seven Sears warehouses that store appliances like washers and big-screen television sets for direct delivery to customers.
The picking application runs on a server, in this case an IBM RS 6000 computer. The software receives orders from the company mainframe computer and then calculates a picking sequence for the workers who retrieve and stage merchandise at the shipping door. When developing the pick sequence, the software optimizes the retrieval of products so that bin space can be freed up for the storage of new items. Bill Driscoll, Sears' director of logistics integration, explains that often more than one appliance can be held in a bin area. By matching orders to bin stock, Sears doesn't have to send its workers to more than one location to fill orders and an entire bin is freed up for inbound shipments.
After it performs the pick calculations, the software then transmits the information via radio-frequency signals to vehicle radio computers (VRCs) marketed by Symbol Technologies. The Model 4040 mobile computers, which have touch screens, are mounted onto each forklift truck.
The picking instructions are transmitted in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) format for processing by the Web browser loaded into each VRC. Instructions on the quantity of items to retrieve and their exact warehouse location are then displayed on the mobile computer's touch screen.
As the worker removes an appliance from storage, he presses the touch screen to record the pick. Data on task completion are then transmitted to the host computer. Such real-time updates on item retrieval have resulted in improved inventory management. "In the past, when workers carried a piece of paper [to record picks], the system didn't know right away when something had been removed from storage," says Nancy McLain, a systems consultant at Sears who helped write the browser-based picking program.
Because the list of appliances to be retrieved is conveyed wirelessly, the driver does not have to return to the office for a new paper pick list after completing each task. "We have a paperless environment now," says McLain. "The workers don't have to carry a clipboard with instructions."
The application has worked so well, McLain reports, that Sears is working on developing a similar software application for putting merchandise away. Once that task is completed, the retailer has an even more ambitious project in mind: It plans to add a bar-code scanner to the mobile computer, which would turn the unit into a Web-enabled data-collection terminal.
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