<![CDATA[Order picking is one of the most labour intensive warehouse operations‚ and picker travel activity accounts for an important proportion of order picking execution in fulfillment areas. In kitting operations that serve a family of manufacturing work centers‚ inefficient paper-based task initiation‚ manual sorting of wave output‚ and self-assignment of work to the picker before productive execution begins increase travel and other wasteful activities. A queue-based picking and work center routing method for value-added services (VAS) kitting operations is described for implementation in a warehouse management system (WMS). Printed pick label bundles and Kanban filing boards are replaced by a mobile execution process where warehouse orders are routed to named queues used for each work center. The pickers follow the system-directed pick path on their radio frequency (RF) terminals. The handling unit (HU) labels are printed on-demand after the task is completed on mobile printers. The proposed architecture only relies on standard WMS parameters: warehouse order creation rule (WOCR)‚ consolidation group control‚ queue determination logic‚ and stock removal control indicator (SRCI) and starts from the assumption that picker routing‚ workload balancing‚ warehouse digitization‚ and wave scheduling should be treated holistically. It is concluded that‚ by eliminating manual sorting dependencies‚ organizing the execution in accordance with work-centres‚ minimizing non-value-adding labor‚ and being able to perform multi-picker waves in parallel with system-directed task assignments‚ queue-based‚ work-centre-integrated picking provides increased visibility of a staging area‚ synchronized component release both on-site and off-site‚ and improved storage efficiency through quantity-based retrieval prioritization‚ providing a desirable design pattern for paperless kitting execution in modern warehousing operations]]>
