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Table of Contents
Zones
Updated by Kevin
Summary
In ShipStream a Zone is a numeric identifier which associates one or more Racks. Sharing the same Zone indicates that Racks are in relatively close proximity to each other for the purpose of batching so that picking batches may be composed in an efficient manner which reduces travel time across a warehouse.
The Batch creation process starts with a "seed" Shipment and determines the pick locations by Location priority. It then starts adding other Shipments to the batch based on proximity to the set of locations that are already being picked in the batch such that the picker will have to visit the least amount of pick Locations, Racks and Zones, thus minimizing overall travel by reducing repeated trips to distant locations. The optimization process starts the search with the pick Locations then expands the search to the same Racks, then the Racks within the same Zones, then the Neighbors of the same Zones and finally if no Shipments are found the whole warehouse.
Zone Fields
Zone Number
The "name" of the Zone. A value in the range from 1 to 63. This is a required field.
Neighbors
The neighboring Zones to this Zone. This is a comma-separated list of Zone Numbers. This is an optional field but for best optimization it is recommended to specify one to three zones which are the closest zones to travel to from the given zone.
Picking Order
Define the picking order for this Zone. The Picking Order can be used to define a high-level Picking Path by defining a path from Zone to Zone.
Defining the Zones
Each warehouse may have up to 63 Zones. During the batch creation process if a pick plan has exhausted pick options in the set of Locations and Racks that must already be visited during the pick plan, the batch optimizer will first look to neighboring Zones before expanding the search to the entire warehouse when all Zone neighbors have been exhausted. Therefore, carefully assigning Racks to Zones and Zone Neighbors can help the batch optimizer reduce your total travel distance by avoiding adding picks to a batch which are farther away from the other locations in a pick plan.
Warehouse | Picking Zone | Neighbors | Picking Order |
1 | 1 | 2,3 | 10 |
1 | 2 | 1,4,7 | 20 |
1 | 3 | 1,4,5 | 30 |
1 | 4 | 2,3,5,7 | 40 |
1 | 5 | 3,4,6,8 | 50 |
1 | 6 | 5,9 | 60 |
1 | 7 | 2,4,8 | 70 |
1 | 8 | 5,7,9 | 80 |
1 | 9 | 6,8 | 90 |
1 | 10 | 11 | 100 |
1 | 11 | 10 | 110 |
1 | 12 | 13 | 120 |
1 | 13 | 12 | 130 |
1 | 14 | 140 | |
1 | 15 | 150 | |
1 | 16 | 160 |