Aisles and locations
Table of contents
- Structure of the warehouse map
- Creating a new aisle
- Viewing the warehouse map
- Editing an aisle
- Configuring the locations
Structure of the warehouse map
In order to use the Ongoing Warehouse Management System, you need to first set up a model of your warehouse. This includes all the locations that you want to use. The warehouse map is organized in a hierarchical fashion. This means that you may group your warehouse locations on several different levels conceptually. The following levels are available:
| Name (English) | Name (Swedish) | Intended to represent |
|---|---|---|
| Warehouse | Lager | A physical warehouse building. |
| Zone | Zon | A subdivision of a warehouse building. For instance, a cold-storage facility may have one zone which is kept at below freezing and one zone which is kept at slightly above freezing. |
| Aisle | Gång | A contiguous group of locations. |
| Location | Lagerplats | A marked place where you can physically place goods. |
So Warehouses contain Zones, and Zones contain Aisles, and Aisles contain Locations.
These objects can all be maintained in Settings ⇒ Warehouse:
Creating a new aisle
To create a new aisle, do the following:
- Go to Settings ⇒ Warehouse ⇒ Aisles.
- Click Create new aisle
- Enter the name of the new aisle.
- Choose which zone it is in.
- Enter how long (X) and high (Y) the aisle is.
- Enter the naming structure. This is a formula which determines how the locations in the aisle are named.
- Click Preview.
- If certain locations are not actually present (e.g. there may be physical beams in the warehouse which prevents there from being a location in that spot), delete those locations.
- When satisfied, click Create.
Example: numeric location names
We wish to create an aisle with the following specifications:
- It is 5 locations wide and 3 locations high.
- The locations in the bottom row should be called "FR1-01-01", "FR1-02-01", and so on.
- The locations in the top row should be called "FR1-01-03", "FR1-02-03", and so on.
- The location FR-03-01 does not physically exist.
To do this, we fill out the form like so:
Then we click on Preview. At this point we can click on "Delete" on any location to remove it. After that, we click on Create.
Example: location names with letters
We wish to create an aisle with the following specifications:
- It is 4 locations wide and 3 locations high.
- The locations in the bottom row should be called "FR2-A-05", "FR-A-06", etc.
- The locations in the top row should be called "FR2-C-05", "FR-C-06", etc.
This is similar to example 1, but not quite the same. There are the following differences:
- The names in the X direction don't start at 1 - they start at 5.
- The locations are named with the Y direction before the X direction.
- Instead of using digits for naming in the Y direction, we want letters (A, B, C) instead.
To accomplish this, we use the "From/To X" function in order to specify the starting and ending values for X. Then we uncheck "Numerical Y", which gives us letters for the Y direction instead of numbers:
After clicking Preview, we see the following:
Viewing the warehouse map
If you go to Warehouse ⇒ Warehouse map, you can inspect the warehouse map and also see how much goods is available in each location:
Editing an aisle
In the warehouse map, there is a link called "Edit" above each aisle:
By clicking it, you are taken to a page which is similar to the one used above to create a new aisle. You can use this page if you want to add an entirely new section to an aisle.
Example: adding a new section
Let's continue with the aisle FR2 from above. Say we want to add a new section to its right: FR-A-09, FR-B-09, and FR-C-09. We use the warehouse map to edit the aisle, and fill it in like so:
Note that this is almost exactly what we filled in when we created the aisle, with the exception of the last digit of the X locations. Here fill in 9 instead of 8. The system now shows us the difference between how the aisle used to look, and how it will look after the update. When satistified, we can click on Update.
Note: when updating an aisle, the system requires you to fill in a "Location to move goods to". If your changes to the aisle means that a location must be deleted, then the system will first move all goods from the deleted location to "Location to move goods to".
Configuring the locations
After you have created your locations, you may wish to configure them further. For instance, you may want to restrict certain locations so that at most one article can be stored in them.
Location settings
If you go to Settings ⇒ Warehouse ⇒ Locations, you can edit each location. The following settings are available:
| Name (English) | Name (Swedish) | Description | Requires goods owner activation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aisle | Gång | The aisle which the location belongs to. You can use this if you wish to move a location to another aisle. | No |
| Location type | Lagerplatstyp | Determines which type the location has. | No |
| X and Y | X och Y | The position of the location within its aisle. | No |
| Picking priority | Plockprioritet | Used when printing picking lists. The locations are sorted according to their picking priority (from low to high). This allows you to customize the picking route. | No |
| Items in this location are locked | Gods på denna plats är låst | Determines if all goods on the location are locked automatically, so the goods can't be picked. Note that you may still receive goods into a location where "Items locked" has been set. | No |
| Items in this location are locked for sale | Gods på denna plats är låst för sälj | This option is only available if you have also checked "Items in this location are locked". It is checked by default. If you uncheck "locked for sale", this means that the items are available for refilling picking locations.
Thus, this setting allows you to have two kinds of locked locations: one which contains "goods which may leave the warehouse if they are first moved to a picking location during the refill process", and another kind of location which contains "goods which may not leave the warehouse at all". |
No |
| Only one article item in this location | Högst en godsindivid på denna plats | Restricts the location so that it may contain only 1 article item. Note that this is a very strict condition. | Yes |
| Only one serial number in this location | Högst ett serienummer på denna plats | Restricts the location so that it the article items stored in it must have the same serial number. | Yes |
| Default location for at most one article | Påfyllnadsplats för högst en artikel | Restricts the location so that it can't be the default picking location of two different articles. | No |
Location type settings
As described above, each location can be assigned to a location type. You can freely create new location types. They are maintained in Settings ⇒ Warehouse ⇒ Location Types.
There are settings that can be made on each location type, which are applied to each location of the specific location type. The following location type settings are available:
| Name (English) | Name (Swedish) | Description | Requires goods owner activation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Only one article number in locations of this type | Högst ett artikelnummer på platser av denna typ | If set, this means that you may store at most one distinct article number on locations of this location type. | Yes |
| Only one goods owner's articles in locations of this type | Högst en godsägares godsägares varor på platser av denna typ | If set, this means that you may store articles from at most one goods owner at locations of this location type. Note that you can't set exactly which goods owner is allowed to use the location, only that at most one goods owner at a time may use the location. | No |
Settings which require goods owner activation
In the above list of settings, some settings are marked as "Requires goods owner activation". What this means is that is not enough for the location or location type to have the setting in question. If you wish the location or location type setting to actually be applied when working with a certain goods owner, you must also activate it on the goods owner.
To do this, go to Registers ⇒ Goods Owners and select the goods owner in question. Then click on "Advanced" and then on "Activate constraints configured on locations":
Then click on "Update" to save the setting.