Goods-to-Person (GTP)

Good-to-person (GTP) solutions have been on the market for decades. But with the recent exponential growth of e-commerce — and the parallel need to fill more orders more quickly than ever — the industry is constantly inventing new ways to meet the demand for automated solutions.

The result is a diverse market of automated solutions, many of which can be implemented quickly and with little impact on a facility’s ongoing operations. Many solutions are modular and scalable, allowing facilities to invest in automation that can be quickly implemented and that best targets their most crucial pain points. As their investment helps their capacity grow, they can continue to scale up their investment in automation by targeting the processes that will most benefit.

This allows for a facility to grow its capacity while achieving realistic ROIs.

Introducing automated solutions usually represents a capital expenditure. However, the benefits of implementing the right solutions for a facility means lower operating expenses that will, in the long run, outweigh the costs of the investment.

Automated or semi-automated GTP solutions can lower order cycle times, increase throughput, and improve sequencing and balance the loads across the facility. Because they eliminate an operator’s travel through a facility, they reduce the dependence on labor and decrease wasted motion and the number of touches per order.

In a person-to-goods operation, operators spend the majority of their time traveling through the warehouse, which makes picking the largest operational expense for most facilities. Removing operators from the low-value task of pulling goods from storage removes them from a slow and injury-prone job.

Bringing goods to the operator also allows a facility to re-think how it’s organized. In high throughput applications, goods can be stored as much as 50% more densely in automated systems than in conventional systems. And workstations can be made highly functional as well as redundant or specialized. If a station isn’t being used for a shift, it can simply be closed without affecting the rest of the operation.

In a conventional warehousing operation, travel to and from the pick face accounts for the majority of the operator’s time. By implementing a goods-to-person system, you deliver goods directly to the operator’s workstation and eliminate this major source of wasted motion, as well as the extra touches manual picking requires.

This makes your picking operations much more efficient while also increasing order accuracy. Depending on the exact nature of your goods-to-person system, it can also increase your storage density, your overall inventory controls, and even the safety of your workers. Not only are they removed from traveling a warehouse also used by forklifts and other machinery, but they also have items delivered to them at an ergonomic height that reduces overuse injuries.

The market has a wide variety of goods-to-person solutions and each operates using their own hardware and software. You need to know that, whichever GTP solution you choose, it will interface with your other systems.

A warehouse management system (WMS) like ScottTech PickPro® can both integrate with your third-party GTP system, and also control and optimize the other components of your distribution. Because ScottTech PickPro® is a cloud-based, system-agnostic WMS, it interfaces seamlessly with, and helps optimize, all aspects of your warehouse operations.

In conventional picking operations, static racking is often a universal solution to storage. Half-pallets are slotted into bays capable of holding full pallets or even multiple pallets. Shelves are put at the operator’s level, but void space is left between the goods and the racking above. While these shelves can be adjusted, it’s a labor intensive process that can’t be done for every box or pallet in the warehouse.

Many GTP systems, in contrast, can eliminate void space, saving between 30% and 90% of the overall footprint compared to traditional storage. Vertical lift modules (VLMs), for example, know the dimensions of the goods being stored and automatically slot them in the smallest possible space. If a box or good is picked from a tray — changing the overall dimensions — the system can detect this and slot the tray in a different space that minimizes its footprint.

In high-throughput applications — whether meeting seasonal peaks for a few items or consistent demand in large distribution centers — GTP systems can help hectic and confusing workflows become more stable and efficient. As orders come in, the system can automatically determine how many goods to send to which workstation, and send them without interference from the operator.

From the operator’s perspective, instead of walking to the same pick face again and again — and potentially increasing their walking distance by miles per shift during periods of high demand — goods are delivered to their workstations at a steady pace and at an ergonomic height.

With the exponential growth of e-commerce and business-to-consumer order fulfillment, engineering economy into the picking process has become essential. Picking and packing small quantities or individual pieces is more time consuming and labor intensive than, for example, simply rolling full pallets onto a trailer for a retail store.

Especially as a facility’s throughput increases, automating as many of the processes as possible in the sortation, picking, and packing of goods becomes essential. Automation enables fulfillment centers to meet the speeds, accuracies, and efficiencies their customers expect.

In a fast-paced distribution center, automating the picking process with a GTP system can be an integral part of the basic operations of the facility. As other processes that take place in a distribution center — including product mixing, cross docking, sortation, packaging, and distribution to business and residential customers — become automated, an automated picking process will enable the proper sequencing of all the business’s other moving parts.

For facilities that are not yet automated, the picking process can be an efficient first place to start. Person-to-goods picking is an unnecessary source of increased order cycle times and error rates, while also being one of the least efficient — and most easily rectified — operations in most facilities.

For high-throughput facilities, and especially for high-throughput facilities that are just being built or remodeled, fixed solutions like sortation conveyors, vertical lift modules, and automated storage and retrieval systems can offer the most cost effective solutions on the market.

For facilities that are seeing growth, that have seasonal peaks, or that need to incorporate automation with minimal impact on their ongoing operations, modular and scalable GTP systems are available. By identifying the most beneficial use-case in a facility, and targeting modular solutions to solve the biggest pain points, facilities can introduce cost-effective solutions that can scale up as their business grows.