Field notes
Questions that only make sense in an aisle
These pieces come from visits, not from generic warehouse slogans. They argue about beams, door cycles, and extracts that lie about cube.
-
Why fast lines still end up on the top beam
ABC by units shipped is not the same as ABC by cube. Pick faces fill from the easy beam first, then the awkward remainder is left for the lines that actually move.
-
When reserve and the pick face stop speaking
Replenishment tickets fire, yet the pallet that arrives is the wrong size, the wrong batch, or already needed two aisles over. Drift is a location habit, not a printer fault.
-
Measuring picker travel with a stopwatch and a floor plan
You do not need a new warehouse computer to learn that wave three crosses the same intersection sixteen times. A marked plan and honest timestamps will show it.
-
Slotting after a retailer drops forty lines and adds twelve
Empty pick faces look like spare capacity until the new twelve need more cube than the forty ever did. Range change is a slotting event, not just a purchase-order event.
-
Slotting in the cold: time, gloves, and door cycles
A perfect golden-zone map fails if every pick requires a door cycle that ices the seal. Cold-store slotting is limited by people and doors as much as by velocity.
