Warehouse Automation Utilizing Put Walls in Warehouses and Fulfillment Processes

What Are Put Walls in a Warehouse?

Put walls are systems used in warehouse operations to streamline the order fulfillment process. They consist of a series of compartments or slots where workers place picked items for individual orders. Each compartment represents a single customer order.  Put walls create significant efficiency in the picking process by allowing bulk inventory picking from various warehouse zones. 

When items are picked in bulk, and sorted down at a centralized location, this minimizes picking errors and human error.  Put walls can either be manual or fully automated systems depending on volume and item characteristics. Additionally, put walls can be used for building kits, not just order picking.

Put walls are very flexible, supporting a wide range of products, order sizes and order types.  This flexibility makes put walls beneficial for a wide range of warehouses.  For manual put walls, a worker would physically take items and sort them down to their designated compartments.

This is done through the use of barcodes with workers being directed to a compartment, typically utilizing a series of lights and LED displays.   Some manual put walls will utilize voice directed headsets as opposed to light displays.  Automated put walls will utilize autonomous robotics and sortation to physical build orders. 

These types of technology allow for a more automated warehouse environment which can decrease labor costs, increase throughput and lower error rates. Put walls are a great option for a wide range of ecommerce, retail and wholesale distribution businesses. 

The main benefit of put walls is leveraging the most efficient batching and bulk pull of items from a picking perspective.  The sorting to the order level allows companies to focus on packing and shipping with a high degree of order accuracy.  This speed and accuracy are what drives high customer service and inventory accuracy. 

From a systems perspective, put walls integrate with warehouse management systems (WMS) and warehouse execution systems (WES).  This allows for the process to be more tightly tracked and managed from an efficiency and order tracking perspective.

By utilizing barcodes, along with put to light technology, allows for real time inventory and order visibility and tracking.  Warehouse operations are able to process a high volume of orders with less manual intervention and oversight than traditional picking. This allows operations to scale much more easily. These advancements allow mid-sized and large distribution centers to optimize processes and reduce labor costs. 

How Do Put Walls Work?

Put walls work by organizing and consolidating picked items from different warehouse zones into individual compartments. Each compartment represents a single customer order or shipment. 

This begins with batch picking items in a wave.  Items are picked in bulk throughout the warehouse.  Once the items are picked, they are transported to the put wall area.  Companies tend to utilize one of the following methods for transporting the bulk picks:

• Regular pick carts, or inner packs and cases pulled from pallets.
• Utilizing conveyors to pull items picked from various warehouse zones to a consolidation point.
• Autonomous mobile robotics to take the place of conveyors.

Once the picked items reach the put wall area, each item is placed in a designated slot or tote corresponding to a specific order. One common approach is for the worker to scan an item, a corresponding light come on for the designated compartment.  The worker places the item and confirms the process, usually with a button on the compartment. 

Once all picked items for an order are placed in the designated compartment, a light will come on letting a packer know an order is complete.  At this point the order is ready for packing and shipping. This system helps minimize confusion and human error.  Additionally, it ensures that items from different picking zones are correctly sorted.

The process described is typical of manual put wall technologies.  However, put wall systems can be manual, or highly automated. With manual put walls, workers are responsible for sorting items into specific slots using barcodes.

With automated put walls, companies typically utilize conveyors and scanning tunnels to direct robotics to handle the sorting process. This significantly decreases the amount of warehouse labor needed to oversee the process. Utilizing barcodes or RFID for identifying SKUs ensures accurate sorting and order building. This flexibility allows ecommerce order fulfillment to scale mid-sized and high-volume fulfillment centers.

Put walls integrate with Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and Warehouse Execution Systems (WES). These systems allow for real-time tracking of all inventory and orders in the fulfillment process.

For example, once all the items for a particular order are picked and sorted to the designated compartment, packers are notified. Packers can then pull the items for that order and a packing slip can be automatically generated to go with the shipment. For orders that require multiple shipments, this process is handled seamlessly with no intervention.

Both manual put walls and automated put walls allow for faster order fulfillment processes with less labor costs and higher accuracy.

Benefits of Using Put Walls in Your Warehouse

Put walls offer many benefits to improve warehouse efficiency and employee productivity. One of the main advantages is increased speed in the order fulfillment process. These include the following:

• High efficiency in the picking process. Pickers can zone pick their respective items without having to walk the entire fulfillment center. This also eliminates the number of trips to a single pick location for high volume items.
• Allowing for efficient zone picking reduces bottlenecks and congestion within the operations, this reduces labor costs.
• Items can be picked and sorted faster than traditional picking operations, with a high degree of accuracy by using barcode scanning. This reduces labor costs and improves customer service.
• Orders can be picked, packed and shipped faster. This allows for meeting customer demand with higher throughput, especially at peak times. During holidays, this will help to avoid orders that miss the cutoff window with carrier pickups.
• High degree of order accuracy reduces the number of customer satisfaction issues and returns. Additionally, it helps to eliminate the number of re-ships due to picking errors. This will greatly reduce operating costs, labor costs and lost shipping dollars.
• Put walls allow for better utilization of staff which decreases labor costs. Fewer workers can process a higher volume of orders in the same period of time. The packing process can be streamlined without having to put order accuracy on the packer.
• Automated put walls allow for warehouse operations to utilize labor on more value-added tasks, rather than a repetitive task like sorting.
• New hires can be trained and onboarded much faster. This allows them to be more productive when utilizing technologies like put walls. This makes them an excellent for fulfillment centers with a high rate of seasonal workers and temp hires.

Types of Put Wall Systems

Put wall systems can be configured in several ways. Each design configuration can meet a wide range of functions from ecommerce order fulfillment to building kits and sets for a wide range of businesses or operations.

As previously discussed, the most basic style of put wall is a manual put wall. With these, the following process is fairly typical:

• Picked items arrive at the put wall area.
• Typically, a tote, or series of totes, are directed to a worker at a specific put wall.
• Those totes represent all the items for the batch of orders that will be sorted at that specific put wall.
• A worker will take the inventory out of the tote and scan the barcode on the item.
• A light or display will illuminate at the corresponding compartment for the order requiring that item.
• The worker will place the item in that compartment and confirm the task by pushing a button at the display or light.
• Once all items for an order have been placed in the compartment, a light or display on the opposite side lets the packer know an order is ready to be packed out.

With manual put walls, it is not uncommon for operations to print pack slips on demand and distribute them to the corresponding bins while the picks are being sorted. Another option is printing the pack slip on demand as each order is packed out.

For most small to mid-sized e-commerce order fulfillment, these types of put walls are most common. They provide significant efficiency gains with reasonable returns on investment. For smaller businesses, manual put walls offer a good starting point for improving order consolidation and decreasing travel time.

For large ecommerce order fulfillment, automated put wall systems can provide significantly higher throughput volumes, scale to a higher degree, and require much less labor overall.

Automated put wall systems take order consolidation to the next level. These systems utilize mobile robots to take the picked items and deliver them to the corresponding compartments for order consolidation. This eliminates a worker having to distribute the picked items to the corresponding compartment.

In different environments, workers are inducting the picked items to a conveyor system. The items are passing through a scan tunnel where the item is identified, and robotics deliver it to the correct order compartment.

Automated put walls integrate seamlessly with warehouse management systems (WMS). Like manual put walls, this allows for real-time tracking and improved inventory accuracy. These robotic put walls are ideal for larger distribution centers that need to process high volumes of orders and want to eliminate travel time.

These systems have a much higher cost of entry compared to manual put walls, but for high volume distribution center operations, these can have a favorable payback.

Optimizing Put Walls for Warehouse Efficiency

Implementing and operating put walls require distribution centers to change some of the operational planning. To efficiently utilize put wall, and to maximize the technology, consider the following:

• Operations need to align the number of orders with the put walls capacity. Distribution centers need the cube and weight of items to ensure that the compartments are properly configured and can handle the size of the items.
• Operations need to ensure that wave sizes match the available put wall compartments. This will help prevent bottlenecks and keeps the processes and workflows optimal. Overloading the put wall with too many orders can slow down sorting. Underutilizing put wall compartments will negatively impact your ROI. This is where a warehouse management system or a warehouse execution system can optimize wave size to get the most out of put walls.
• Companies need reassess the order profiles and SKU profiles to determine if the compartment sizes are still appropriately sized. If orders and SKU sizes increase, this may lead to increased compartment sizes - which may lead to additional put walls. This is where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can help monitor throughput and labor efficiency. The flexible configurations are critical as businesses grow and evolve.
• Continually analyze how to improve the ergonomics of the put walls as well as the flow with packing and shipping. This will maximize the effectiveness of the put walls in your fulfillment operations.
• Regardless of how pickers pull inventory from pick locations, consider how conveyor systems or autonomous mobile robotics (AMRs) can transport picked items to the put walls. This reduces unnecessary walking by pickers which reduces labor costs.

By proactively making adjustments and leveraging real-time data from a warehouse management system or warehouse execution system, distribution centers can ensure that their put wall system remains a vital tool in maintaining high levels of efficiency.

Challenges and Considerations When Implementing Put Walls

For e-commerce fulfillment, multichannel fulfillment, retail distribution, and even kitting, there are significant benefits to put wall systems. From real-time visibility and fulfillment accuracy to improved customer satisfaction, put wall solutions and put to light systems are a great automated option. However, there are several challenges that must be considered before selecting and implementing a put wall solution.

• The largest is the upfront cost that must be considered. This is especially true for robotic put walls versus manual put walls. Understanding the total cost of ownership is critical. It must include the upfront integration costs, warehouse management system or warehouse execution system or modules, and the ongoing service and maintenance. Smaller companies may find the cost of entry a hurdle, but a quick automation assessment can help identify opportunities.
• The installation process may cause some disruptions within your existing operations. Space will need to be opened up to install the put walls and reconfigure the packing and shipping lines. Distribution centers will need to have this space open and available for the installation.
• Companies will need to have a warehouse management system (WMS) that is capable of managing the put walls. There are instances where a warehouse execution system (WES) is more flexible and can do a better job of managing the hardware and order distribution. These systems are critical to gaining the intended fulfillment efficiencies.
• Along with the need for a WMS or WES, systems integrations are one of the most important tasks. Poorly planned and programmed integrations will cause delays and issues with attempting any type of go live. Some companies will need to bring in outside programming resources and integration expertise. Equally as important is the testing phase of the implementation. Testing will need to cover all types of orders, SKUs and scenarios to ensure everything from the systems to the hardware are working appropriately.
• Staff training is essential for both manual and automated systems. Workers need to be comfortable with the new processes and technologies, which may involve a learning curve. Providing thorough training ensures a smoother transition and maximizes the system's effectiveness. This is the only way to ensure you hit your targeted fulfillment productivity goals and labor efficiency.

Considerations When Choosing a Put Wall System for Your Warehouse

There are many put wall solutions available for mid and large high-velocity fulfillment and distribution centers. Selecting the right type of put wall solution involves decisions on both the hardware as well as having the right software (WMS or WES). The factors that should drive your decision should include the order profiles, SKU weight/dimensions and your overall budget.

For smaller operations with limited throughput, manual put wall systems may be the most cost-effective and practical option. These options are more budget friendly and can be installed faster than automated put walls. Maintenance and support are also less than that of automated options. This leads to a faster ROI and labor efficiency.

When choosing a put wall system, companies need to consider the types of products that will be handled. A more flexible configuration will be needed for those operations that deal with a wide range of SKU sizes, etc.

As an example, a modular put wall with adjustable compartments would be more beneficial. Those companies with high seasonal swings, will need a put wall system that can easily scale up and down as the need arises. This can also be where automated solutions utilizing robotics can heal cope with the swings in volumes as opposed to human labor.

The amount of open warehouse space and your physical layout will also have a direct impact on choosing the right put wall hardware and configuration. Automated put walls utilizing robotics can take a fair amount of space in the distribution center. Your put wall location is dependent on the packing and shipping lines.

Summary

These systems will decrease labor requirements and improve the overall operator workflow for many ecommerce companies. Consider the cubby configuration flexibility and your products and order profiles.  Considering using a warehouse consultant that can assist your company with evaluating various options and developing a comprehensive, realistic ROI for your company to consider.