Wave Planning In Oracle Warehouse Management Systems - Improve

Fulfillment Process Efficiency

Executive Summary
Work planning in a warehouse is an important activity that involves selecting orders for fulfillment, grouping
the orders for fulfillment for efficiency and optimal resource utilization and finally monitoring the progress of
orders.

Some of the common challenges for doing work planning are: 1) Maintaining the service level for
warehousing operations. 2) Get insight into important warehouse resources such as inventory and labor. 3)
Finding out the expected fill rates and labor usage before doing picking operation for Sales Orders?

The Wave planning feature available in Oracle WMS 12.1 can address the above challenges.
Wave is group or batch of orders that share a common attribute. The wave makes it easy to look for
optimization opportunities and monitoring the progress of orders. Wave planning involves the creation of a
group of lines for more efficient execution. With a shift towards “Lean Logistics” wave planning or batching
may not be suitable for all warehouse environments. Wave planning is most useful when fulfillment can be
most efficiently carried out by grouping of orders, looking for optimization opportunities and efficient
utilization of warehouse constraints. Wave planning provides flexibility during order fulfillment. It enables
you to create, plan and release waves in one step, or in multiple steps.
In this presentation, we will talk about how you can use wave planning to simulate a wave to find out the
bottlenecks in satisfying the service level for Order Fulfillment. We will also talk about the process for
creating a wave, releasing a wave to production and running and monitoring a wave.

The steps for wave planning involve creating a wave, planning a wave, releasing a wave, and monitoring a
wave as shown in the above fig. When you create a wave, you can select the criteria which determine the
orders to include in the wave. When you plan the wave you determine the labor requirements and select
what to do if stock is not available to fulfill orders. You can also add and remove lines from a wave during the
planning phase.
When you release the wave, the pick release process is initiated and material is allocated for the planned
orders. Finally, during the monitoring phase, you monitor the wave and take action when exceptions occur.

Wave Planning Process Flow

Creating a Wave:
The process of creating a wave requires selecting the criteria that determine the orders to include in the
wave. The criteria can be as simple as creating wave based on order, customer, carrier, item, trip, and
delivery information to advanced criteria like picking all single line orders or pick orders when a total tare
weight or dollar value is greater than a specific threshold.
You can create one or more waves using the create wave form, simulate the planning process for each of the
wave and once you compare the results, you can decide which wave(s) to release. You can also automate the
whole wave planning process using Oracle WMS.

Planning a Wave:
After you create the wave, you can plan the wave using the Wave Workbench. Planning the wave involves
the selection of criteria to further redefine your fulfillment process. For example, you can set default actions
when inventory is not available. You can use the simulation process to create and plan the wave until you get
an optimum solution for your labor usage and fulfillment options.

Releasing a Wave:
Once you have planned the wave and you are ready to fulfill the orders in the wave, you release the wave. At
this stage the pick release process is initiated and material is allocated to orders.

Monitoring a Wave:
Wave Dashboard window lets you view order and order line level details, track the progress of orders in the
warehouse, manage tasks, review labor planning criteria, and manage exceptions.

You can also you this window to search for waves by wave number or other criteria, view high-level summary
information about waves, monitor all picking activity in a warehouse, view automatic and recurring requests,
and view the wave status for specific dates.

Example of the Wave Planning Process for a Customer

 Business Value:

1. Designed for throughput of more than 20,000 lines/hr.

2. Provides greater flexibility during order fulfillment.

3. Recommend qualified wave for “Critical” orders.

4. Single workbench to monitor warehouse activity.

5. Measure productivity within a function and budget labor.

6. Estimate the throughput capacity based on staffing levels.

Key Benefits:
1. Fulfill a large number of orders quickly by streamlining the full execution process.

2. Flexible and powerful planning tool with a dashboard to create, plan and track wave.

3. Configure exceptions to facilitate the proactive resolution of issues.

4. Group and dispatch tasks based on an execution criterion using task planning feature.

5. Supports High Volume Order Fulfillment.

6. Do Labor Planning and Order Fulfillment for High Volume of Orders automatically.

7. Auto Exception and Issue Resolution.

8. View high-level summary information about waves, monitor all picking activity in a
warehouse and view the wave status for specific dates.

9. Measure productivity within a function and budget labor.

10. Allows the warehouse manager to monitor all picking activity in the warehouse.

Conclusion:
In an ever-changing Distribution an environment with increasing sales and shipping requirements, increased
competition and changing customer requirements, and smarter systems and associated technologies, a WMS
becomes an even more powerful tool for planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the Picking
function.

By creating a tool capable of representing the critical relationship of wave planning to operations execution
in expected distribution system operations, companies can significantly improve the return on investment
associated with implementing and maintaining a WMS. This approach can be implemented at multiple points
in the life-cycle of the distribution operation, from WMS implementation planning to periods of significant
changes in customer orders.

Oracle WMS’s Wave planning tool’s ability to unbundle and re-bundle customer orders — and to work with
other technologies, methods, and procedures — can support management’s need to handle the increasing
workload, significantly improve picking labor productivity, and increase the shipping capacity of a warehouse.