Using cherry pick replenishment

This process is normally used in a situation where top-off replenishments are being done to an area of the warehouse that cannot be accessed by forklift, such as the mezzanine area. Mezzanine operations typically consist of gravity-fed racking that allows warehouse workers to pick many items in a small area. Mezzanines are usually two or three levels high, and are not easily accessed by the replenishment equipment.

For example, the conventional racking in a sample warehouse provides between four and eight pick locations for each eight-foot area. Mezzanine racking provides between 16 and 48 pick facings per level, providing as many as 144 pick facings in the same eight-foot area. Without the use of cherry pick replenishment, it would take 144 separate trips to provide the stock required to keep these picks supplied.

(48 pick facings x 3 levels high = 144 pick facings in the same 8-foot space)

Common examples using cherry pick replenishment

  • A warehouse has a tri-level mezzanine, requiring replenishments to be assembled on a pallet, based on the stocker staging areas they supply.
  • A high security area requires full cases for replenishment to be delivered through a single opening, limiting associate access to the area.

Cherry pick replenishment options

The cherry pick replenishment feature works in conjunction with Pick and Drop (PND) features, in which pallets are built with LPNs and dropped at an interim location before the final putaway task. However, you can use it without PND functionality for replenishing the same item from multiple reserve locations to a single pick location.

During cherry pick replenishment, the following options are available:

  • The cherry picker can override the quantity requested. For example, if a very small number of units remain in the reserve location, the cherry picker might want to take those extra units.
  • If not enough units are in the reserve location, the cherry picker can confirm a lesser quantity while supplying a reason code (SHORT), which can be configured to create a cycle count request.

    You can configure the reason code to create a new cherry pick replenishment task. The new task can have these features:

    • Linked to the same cherry pick To LPN
    • May come from a different From LPN in the same From location as the original task
    • May come from a different location in the same zone for the shorted portion on the original task
    • Shorted portion on the original task can be removed from the source, From location, to a designated missing inventory location
  • The cherry picker can elect to close the pallet after partial details have been completed. For example, if the cube information was incorrect, and too many replenishments were generated, the picker can close the pallet.