Analysis of the main points of the e-commerce logistics warehousing planning and warehousing operations

Introduction: the following from the e-commerce logistics warehousing link to start, on the planning of warehousing logistics and information systems of a number of key points to discuss, I hope to be able to give you readers some reference significance. Let's take a look at the relevant content.

An introduction

In recent years, e-commerce is very popular, the development rate is very fast, and the development trend is faster and faster. The data released by the China E-commerce Research Center on August 19th shows that in the first half of 2013, the transaction scale of China's e-tailing market reached 754.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 47.3%. It is expected that by the end of 2013, the national online shopping transaction volume is expected to reach 1,741.2 billion yuan, and in the first half of 2013, the transaction scale of China's e-tailing market accounted for 6.8% of total retail sales of consumer goods, and by the end of the year, it is expected to exceed 7%. Looking at the development trajectory of e-commerce in developed countries, China's e-commerce in the total retail sales of consumer goods has room for further growth.

The rapid development of e-commerce, its supporting facilities and services also need to keep up, and the most important non-storage, distribution and other logistics services. Competition between e-commerce, and ultimately transformed into a back-end logistics competition, who is good logistics services, who will win more customers. Compared with traditional retail, e-commerce on warehousing and distribution logistics dependence is higher, up to 60%. E-commerce logistics is mainly divided into warehousing, distribution of the two major links, of which the distribution link is the last kilometer distribution, the vast majority of the current still rely on existing courier companies such as? Four-way and one-da? etc., only a few large e-commerce companies in the self-built distribution system. Warehousing is mainly responsible for picking the right number of the right goods from the warehouse in accordance with customer orders for packaging, and then handed over to the distribution team for distribution, most of which are still managed by the e-commerce company itself. How to improve e-commerce logistics services, win more customers, for e-commerce companies, more can be improved in the warehousing link, distribution link service improvement is mainly dependent on the courier company.

This article is mainly from the e-commerce logistics warehousing link to start, on the warehousing logistics planning and information systems to discuss a number of key points, I hope to be able to give readers some reference significance.

Second e-commerce warehousing logistics and traditional retail logistics comparative analysis

e-commerce warehousing because of some of the characteristics of the industry, such as direct consumer-oriented, the customer is the ultimate consumer, so the need for warehouses to be able to accurately pick and pack in accordance with the customer's order, the warehouse logistics orders for the productivity and accuracy requirements are very high. Accuracy requirements are very high. Traditional industry, warehousing and logistics services are mainly stores, compared to the distribution to the store picking accuracy is not as demanding as the e-commerce industry. At the same time, the frequency of delivery to the stores, delivery time, and even return time, etc., are basically in accordance with the pre-planned; the stores to order goods and the number of commodities, but also with e-commerce customers there are great differences. These differences, the details of the operation of warehousing logistics, will have a great impact. According to their respective situations, the need for appropriate planning, optimization and operation.

(a) the average number of order lines less

Traditional retail logistics have large dozens, or even more than a few hundred order lines, these goods may be distributed in all corners of the warehouse, picking by order, the warehouse to walk around to complete the order picking. E-commerce warehousing logistics only a small number of orders line, in most cases, such as Jingdong, Dangdang, etc. will not be more than 10, a small number of stores such as No. 1 will be between 10 and 20, if you still choose to use traditional retail logistics commonly used in the order picking, picking only a small amount of each trip to pick a few pieces of the need to go a lot of road in the warehouse. A large number of real-world data analysis results show that the picking process has as much as 70% of the time is spent on walking. Therefore, we need to design a picking trip to be able to complete multiple orders at the same time, to improve the efficiency of picking, such as the first collection of picking and then seeding, or picking and sowing in one mode.

(2) a single SKU inventory less

Compared to traditional retail, e-commerce sales platform without the traditional store space constraints, so in order to attract and meet the needs of more customers, e-commerce sales of SKUs to be more comprehensive, such as Amazon and Dangdang, etc. There are hundreds of thousands of hundreds of thousands of SKUs, millions of SKUs. But because the storage space can not be expanded indefinitely, how to place more SKUs in the limited storage space, it is necessary to stock less of each SKU. Therefore, e-commerce warehousing logistics in the storage unit, box-based, rather than the traditional pallet-based. From the point of view of the choice of storage equipment, the main choice of box-type shelves, such as shelving racks or medium-sized shelves, rather than palletized shelves. Operation strategy, most of the storage and picking in one, a small number of large SKUs were allocated storage and picking space, the existence of replenishment operations from storage to picking.

(C) the correctness of the operation requires a high

Compared with the traditional industry, the e-commerce industry on the accuracy of warehousing and logistics operations in the requirements of a higher and more stringent. Therefore, in the e-commerce warehousing logistics internal operation, need to make every effort to ensure the accuracy of the picking, for the picking to complete the distribution of goods to be out of the warehouse, to do 100% of the full review, as well as the majority of cases, the need to carry out the packing operation. Therefore, in the planning and operation of e-commerce warehousing logistics, in addition to picking, how to improve the efficiency of review/packing, is also a top priority.

(D) the operation of real-time requirements

In recent years, many e-commerce companies scramble to introduce ultra-short delivery time, such as Jingdong's 211 delivery, Etsun's three deliveries a day, etc., which requires warehouses need to be completed within 1 or 2 hours of the time of the order picking, reviewing, packing and other operations. Compared with the traditional retail order response time of 24 hours or 48 hours, e-commerce warehousing and logistics operations should ensure that orders are produced as they arrive, and orders are completed within a short period of time. Therefore how to improve the order response time is also a research focus.

(E) order volatility

e-commerce promotions such as double 11, double 12, and store day, etc. attracted a large number of orders, in ten days and a half months can not be delivered to the hands of the customer's news is not uncommon. It can be seen that the order volatility of e-commerce is very large, in the planning and design of e-commerce warehousing and logistics, the site / personnel / equipment, etc., the configuration is flexible enough to meet the large-volume shipments during the promotion, and to be fast. At the same time, there will often be some single product or a combination of group buying / bargaining activities, such activities will also lead to a temporary large number of orders, the back-end of the e-commerce warehousing and logistics requirements are also extremely high. Therefore, the e-commerce warehousing and logistics planning and process design, also need to focus on such activities of the order of rapid production, and even design a special shipping process.

(F) a large number of returns

Because of the characteristics of the e-commerce industry, the customer can not see the physical, based only on the picture, text description on the order purchase, when receiving the physical, and the psychological expectations of the may be a large discrepancy, so compared with traditional retail logistics, e-commerce, returns are extremely large. For the back-end of the e-commerce warehousing logistics, it is necessary to have a strong return merchandise processing ability, the return of goods for rapid sorting, to ensure that the return of goods can be re-sold in a timely manner on the shelves.

Three e-commerce logistics warehousing planning a number of key points to explore

(a) e-commerce warehousing logistics planning contains a project overview

A complete e-commerce warehousing logistics planning generally include the following these projects:

1, the key data collection

◆ Select/collect key business data over time, such as goods data, shipping order data, etc..

2, key data analysis

◆ Collected a large number of business data for EIQ analysis, analysis of SKU shipping characteristics, order characteristics, such as analysis of the total number of SKUs in stock, the average number of orders per day, the average number of lines of orders, the average number of times a day SKUs shipped, etc.;

◆ Separately for the day-to-day, the data of the big promotion, a detailed analysis.

3, layout planning:

◆ According to the results of the data analysis, comprehensive consideration of the need to arrange the functional areas of the operation, the required area and the possible storage equipment, etc., these functional areas of the operation of the reasonable planning and layout of the limited storage space.

4, operation line planning:

◆ Reasonable planning / optimization of the library of the operation of the personnel / equipment line.

5, operation process planning:

◆ daily/promotional situation, receiving/shipping and other key operational process planning.

6, logistics equipment planning:

◆ storage / handling / review / packing / IT-related equipment planning.

7, staffing recommendations:

◆ Organizational structure / job responsibilities / work efficiency recommendations.

(B) E-commerce warehousing and logistics planning points to analyze? Plane layout planning

In addition, it will generally include auxiliary functional areas, such as forklift charging room, equipment storage area, supplies storage area, office and so on.

(C) E-commerce warehousing and logistics planning points analyzed? Logistics equipment planning

Warehouse logistics equipment planning mainly includes storage/handling/review/packaging/IT-related equipment planning, selecting the appropriate equipment, with the completion of each operation. Due to space constraints, this subsection focuses on the handling equipment selected for the picking process. As previously analyzed characteristics of e-commerce, in order to improve the warehousing logistics order production process, in order to improve the efficiency of picking, so the design of three possible ` picking mode (see Part IV for a detailed explanation of the three picking modes): single product picking, set first after the points, while picking the side of the broadcast.

Single item picking and first set and then divided these two picking modes, picking equipment selection, can refer to the traditional bulk picking, such as the use of large picking cage frame or similar to the supermarket shopping picking trolleys and so on. While the side picking and sowing, to complete multiple orders of goods in one trip picking task, and in the process of picking according to each order will be divided into goods, so the selection of picking equipment to be able to isolate each other.

Four e-commerce logistics warehousing operations a number of points

(a) e-commerce logistics warehousing center of the overall business flow chart overview

(b) e-commerce logistics warehousing operator key points of analysis? On the shelf

Modern e-commerce warehousing center function focuses on ? Through? Instead of? Storage? In theory, the higher the turnover rate of goods, the better, the amount of inbound and outbound storage should be basically equal, to achieve fast in and out. How to realize the fast in and out of the storage operation needs to focus on the solution.

This subsection focuses on the discussion of fast forward, that is, how to achieve fast shelves. The use of WMS systems in the warehouse center, the WMS system can be pre-configured and optimized on the shelves of the dynamic line recommended on the shelves of the goods, to guide the site on the shelves of the personnel to carry out the operation. Large e-commerce warehousing center, in order to be able to set down hundreds of thousands or even millions of SKUs of goods, the use of random storage (Random Store) technology, in layman's terms, is a multi-bit goods, a cargo space has more than one SKU, a SKU placed in more than one cargo space. When using this technology on the shelf, the shelf staff to see the nearest cargo space on the space can be placed under the goods, directly on the shelf operation, without having to look for the system recommended shelves on the shelf location, to achieve rapid shelving. But the strategy has a few key points to note: 1) the number of SKUs in a cargo space can not be too much, there is a threshold, when the number of more than this threshold, picking, inventory is quite difficult to spend a lot of time will be increased from the overall efficiency is not high; 2) on the shelf is best to use real-time transmission of data on the device, such as RF handheld terminals, as long as the goods on the shelf can be sold, if you use the bill of sale operation, there will be a long delay. There will be a long delay; 3) For batch management, to achieve the first-in-first-out warehousing center, a cargo space on the same SKU goods can only have a batch, if a purchase of a SKU goods have more than one batch, it is necessary to be shelved to a different cargo space, otherwise it is not possible to carry out the first-in-first-out management.

(3) E-commerce logistics warehouse operator key points analysis? Picking operations

According to the characteristics of the orders in the e-commerce industry, in order to achieve the fast out, you need to classify the orders into batches of picking production. Picking, from a broad category on the main method of picking and sowing 2 kinds of method, but the actual operation of the operation may be one of the ways, or 2 kinds of ways of various combinations. After the industry's many e-commerce warehousing and logistics tests and operations to explore, we believe that in most e-commerce warehousing and logistics most widely used in the main three picking operation mode:

1, single product picking. That is, the order behavior 1 order picking alone. This type of order, when scanning out of the warehouse can be taken in a different way from ordinary orders, can significantly improve the scanning out of the warehouse speed, so it is recommended to deal with separate.

2, first set and then divided. First, a batch of orders will be assembled, in a trip picking task to complete, picking and then go to the sub-seeding area in accordance with the customer orders for sub-seeding.

3, while picking and sowing. Similar to the second, also a trip to deal with a batch of orders. The difference with the second kind is that in the picking at the same time to complete the seeding in accordance with the customer's order, after picking the goods directly into the review of the packing process.

3 possible picking operation mode, the root of which is to process as many orders as possible in a picking batch to improve order production efficiency. However, in operational production, a picking batch often corresponds to a picker, and the picker can only handle a certain number of orders due to the limitations of his or her personal processing capabilities and loading tools. Typically, a picking batch can handle up to 40 or 50 orders, depending on the situation.

How to efficiently divide picking batches and optimize the picking line for each batch as much as possible is the key to improving picking efficiency. Therefore, there are many factors to consider when dividing picking batches, such as:

1) Order lines, batch processing for orders in different order lines. For a single order line of orders, independent waves, fast picking; order line more (such as greater than 10), independent waves, using picking and sowing in one; general order line, independent waves, using the first set and then divided.

2) the number of orders, such as 20/30/40/50 a single set, according to the actual operating efficiency, the appropriate adjustment set the number of units.

3) carrier restrictions, such as 30KG, picking trolley maximum weight 30KG, overweight is not conducive to picking.

4) Personnel restrictions, such as picking goods after the overweight, can not be pushed or pushed up the efficiency is very low.

5) Clustering, such as the entire warehouse is broken down into several regions, try to pick goods are located in a certain region or a few neighboring regions of the order, combined into a picking batch.