WAREHOUSE FOR PICKING AND SHIPPING

depending on the item, and these are the sales units for wholesalers and large foreign distributors. Finally, there is the single pair which is the one used in e-commerce.

Figure 35: Different types of packaging for different brands

Lastly, these packaged products are taken to the warehouse for picking and shipping

Figure 36: Casalmoro (Italy) picking warehouse

Warehouse solutions for the fashion & luxury sector are chosen from the light load unit solutions analysed in Chapter 6.

In the case of Golden Lady Company, the shelves are divided into 2 parts, in the lower part there are gravity racks that allow the picking of the container by the employees, the upper part is stock which means pallets with the various cartons.

The largest shipment volume is Golden Lady brand about 50 % of shipments (the remaining 50% are the other 4 brands). During the off season, so the summer months about 500 thousand pairs per week are shipped, during the other periods it comes to about 700 thousand pairs per week.

Because of these large shipping volumes for the Golden Lady brand, one of the warehouses is used only for the stock of this brand, from this warehouse is done both the distribution for the carton suppliers and the refilling meaning the replacement of the area used for Golden Lady in the retail warehouses when they get empty.

Le soluzioni di magazzino per il settore del fashion & luxury vengono scelte tra le soluzioni di unità di carico leggere analizzate nel capitolo 6.

There is also a space set aside for past collections, these are products that are still of very good quality but belong to a past collection of about a couple of years. These products are sent to markets such as the Polish market or outlets. The company has only one outlet where it sends products from the past collection.

Obsolete items, that is, those that are about 3 years old, are 6%. This is a quantity kept under control that is being sold to other markets where they are in demand such as eastern European markets.

The picked products are put into cartons created for customers as there may be a case where a merchant's order includes different items and also the company's different brands.

The carton is taken to a sorting line where a barcode is read that identifies the products inside the container. The person doing the picking does so through a radio frequency terminal that indicates the products in the order, quantities, customer, etc.

Each time he picks a product, the picker has to scan the bar code to confirm that he is picking the right pair; everything the terminal reads is associated with a shipping unit, which is a bar code that tells what is inside the carton.

When the carton comes through the line the barcode is read, it recognizes the products inside the carton, it is weighed, a label is created and printed that makes explicit the various products, and finally the carton is destined according to the type of shipping courier.

b) PICKING ACTIVITIES

The carts in the figure (37) are the carts that operators use for picking activities.

Each operator takes a terminal which can be either a finger barcode scanner or classic barcode scanner.

The operator takes the cart, connects with the scanner and terminal, they enter the user’s name and password, and then according to the operations they need to do, the sequence of the items they need to pick appears in the scanner. When the item to be picked comes out, it is specified which aisle to go to, which column to go to, which location to pick, they pick the product, read the barcode of the item, and confirm. Once they have

finished picking all the items are placed in the carton which is placed in the sorting line.

Figure 37: Cart used for picking activity

The systems are not automated, there are automated parts that help the operator understand where to go, what to pick, automatic confirmation, the line that packs

automatically weigh the products but the picking part is still classic with the cart. This is because automating a warehouse with 11 thousand SKUs would be very expensive and the company's volumes during the year do not justify this investment, the seasonality of the product does not justify such an investment.

c) E-COMMERCE

The company has 2 owned e-commerce sites: Golden Lady and Philippe Matignon, plus they have a presence in Amazon, PostalMarket, other sites such as Privalia etc.

The logistical impact of e-commerce is still very low at the level of shipping volumes, ad-hoc trolleys have been created in anticipation of the future where e-commerce may occupy a large part of daily shipping volumes.

A kind of shelf with 12 compartments was placed in the prototype e-commerce cart.

While retail shipping order involves cartons with about 100/200 pairs of products inside, e-commerce involves an average of 5 to 7 pairs at a time, so carts were designed that allow the operator to pick 12 orders at a time and each order is placed on a

compartment.

To improve the efficiency of the operator and minimize the risk of errors, lights were included to help the operator understand that pair of socks in which of the 12 orders it should be placed, then this LED model was designed so that when the operator reads the

barcode of the picked pair, the compartment that corresponds to the customer who ordered that product is illuminated.

Once the products are picked, the operators return to the dedicated e-commerce order station, create the package with the products ordered by the customer with an envelope, close the envelope, and create the shipping label. To date, the impact of e-commerce in the company's supply chain is not significant because it is about 100/200 orders per week, although it is growing month by month, in recent years it has tripled but is not yet at a stage that requires special attention.

The company with the expectation of future growth has already created prototypes of picking carts that will be created in larger numbers when needed.

d) FOREIGN AND ITALIAN WHOLESALERS AND LARGE DISTRIBUTORS The minimum sales quantity for Golden Lady distributors is about 50/100 pairs. These products are stored in pallets ready for pickup. In the stock warehouse used for delivery to wholesalers or large Italian or foreign distributors, there are about 3000 SKUs of Golden Lady products.

Figure 38: Stock warehouse used for delivery to Italian or foreign wholesalers or large distributors

The picking activity is the same as that used for smaller retail orders, only in this case 100-piece cartons are picked, but the logic is still the same.

Everything that is picked in cartons is taken to an area designated for shipping in cartons.