Put-to-light - Comett

Our Put-to-Light Management solution

Introduction Our process Our apps

Our <strong>Put-to-Light</strong> Management solution

Introduction

What is Put-to-Light?

“Order breakdown” or “scan-sort” processes is a common warehouse process where orders are massively picked as a first step then sorted in a second step to fulfill each single customer’s needs. It is tremendously efficient with huge volumes, small orders and large assortments, and very adapted to e-commerce orders fulfillment or store orders fulfillment.

Put-to-Light (or PTL) is a support technology for this type of process: LED modules light are attached to the shelves or to picking the cart, and lights on to direct the logistics operator on where to drop the goods.

Put-to-Light can be used in other breakdown processes, such as pick-to-cart with multiple orders, as well as reverse logistics (returns, …) and cross-dock.

The benefits of Put-to-Light

While put-to-lights systems have been used for a while in warehouses, they still remain used in the most modern warehouses. Here is why.

Service quality: increase customer satisfaction

Orders can fulfilled with no errors

More orders can be processed in a shorter time: orders can be fulfilled and delivered faster to customer

Productivity: reduce your costs

Each gesture is optimized to the minimum: the logistics operator doesn't need to look at the screen for sorting, validating, or being noticed of errors

Intuitive: new comers can be trained quickly to the process

Scanning at packing can be skipped since sorting error possibilities are removed

Our process

Sorting: breaking down the orders

Initiate sorting

The operator logs in

The operator picks up a color (case when concurrency is enabled)

The operator scan the mass unit ID

Sort to order

The operator scan one of the product barcode

The physical location assigned to the order lights on

If the concurrency is enabled, the LED lights with the operator's dedicated color

Drop and validate

The operator validates the goods have been successfully dropped, or by pushing the right module's button, or by using infra-red sensor / RFID wristlet

If the operator makes a mistake, the put-to-light sounds and blink to notify the error so that the operator can correct the mistake in real-time

Packing: from order to delivery

Ready to pack

Once an order is complete the packing side is lighting on so that the packing operators knows the order is ready to pack

For urgent orders, the light is blinking so that the packing operators knows that the order should be processed in priority

Packing operation

Once a packer starts a location, the color change to its dedicated color, so that the packer can retrieve the location if he needs several times to grab the goods

If the order has been split on several locations, the light is blinking

End of order lifecycle

Once the order is finished, LED lights off, and the location is available for sorting again!

Our uncommon features

Concurrency: manage several logistics operators working on the same sorting unit (shelve, cart), by using different light colors
Efficiency: manage different pack levels with different EAN (ex: sort one pack of 6 in one single scan)
Assign the right location size to the right order based on volumes. Overflow if the desired location size is full.
Manage locations outside of put-to-light, for oversize items or to manage demand peaks
Optimized location search algorithm: priority to orders close to completion, "fill the holes" for new orders
Manage packing side with LED modules, including exceptions such as urgent orders and orders with multiple locations