Project overview
A building-products distributor had to ship bulky pallets and small accessory items in the same order stream. That made it difficult to balance forklift-heavy work with piece-picking efficiency.
Challenges
- Forklift traffic and small-parts picking interfered with each other
- Staging lanes filled unpredictably
- Mixed orders caused unstable cycle times
SAP EWM solution design
The SAP EWM blueprint separated activity areas, introduced wave-based release, and used packing and staging rules tailored to mixed-order profiles. The process was meant to simplify flow without creating separate warehouses inside one building.
Key outcomes
Indicative benefits include 15% to 25% lower cycle time for mixed orders, 20% to 30% higher productivity, and visibly less pressure on staging space. Those values are consistent with public wave-management and warehouse automation benchmarks.
Next steps
A logical next phase would be cartonization and dock appointment integration.