Glossario
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Turret truck
Turret trucks are a man-up lift truck similar to an order selector with the exception that rather than fixed forks the forks are mounted on an additional mast and carriage that operates as a turret, turning 90 degrees in either direction facilitating picking and stocking on either side of the aisle. The man-up design makes it easer to handle loads in very tall racking. Very-narrow-aisle trucks are generally recommended to be used in conjunction with a guidance system (wire, rails, optical) within the aisles to increase safety and reduce property damage. Also Turret Trucks require that the floor be perfectly flat and level to operate correctly.
Unit load
A.k.a. unitized load. Material handling term that describes any configuration of materials that allow it to be moved by material handling equipment as a single unit. While smaller manually handled configurations could be considered unit loads, the term generally defines larger configurations that would be moved by a lift truck such as palletized loads, crates, bales, etc.
Unit of measure (U/M)
The unit of measure describes how the quantity of an item is tracked in your inventory system. The most common unit of measure is "eaches" (EA), which simply means that each individual item is considered one unit. An item that uses "cases" (CA or CS) as the unit of measure would be tracked by the number of cases rather than by the actual piece quantity. Other examples of units of measure would include pallets (PL), pounds (LB), ounces (OZ), linear feet (LF), square feet (SF), cubic feet (CF), gallons , thousands, hundreds, pairs, dozens.
Unit-of-measure conversions
A unit-of-measure conversion is needed whenever you work with multiple units of measure. For example, if you purchased an item in cases (meaning that your purchase order stated a number of cases rather than a number of pieces) and then stocked the item in eaches, you would require a conversion to allow your system to calculate how many eaches are represented by a quantity of cases. This way, when you received the cases, your system would automatically convert the case quantity into an each quantity.
Vendor-managed inventory
Phrase used to describe the process of a supplier managing the inventory levels and purchases of the materials he supplies. This process can be very low tech, such as an office supplies supplier or maintenance supplies supplier coming into your facility once per week to visually check stock levels and place a re-supply order, or high tech, such as an electronic component supplier having remote access to your inventory management and MRP system and producing and automatically shipping to meet your production schedule. Vendor-managed inventory reduces internal costs associated with planning and procuring materials and enables the vendor to better manage his inventory through higher visibility to the supply chain. Vendor-managed inventory may be owned by the vendor (consignment inventory) or the customer.
Wave picking
A variation on zone picking where rather than orders moving from one zone to the next for picking, all zones are picked at the same time and the items are later sorted and consolidated into individual orders/shipments. Wave picking is the quickest method for picking multi item orders however the sorting and consolidation process can be tricky. Picking waves are often designed to isolate shipments to specific carriers, routes, etc. See also batch picking, zone picking.
WIP, Work-in-process
Generally describes inventory that is currently being processed in an operation, or inventory that has been processed through one operation and are awaiting another operation. WIP is actually an inventory account that represents the value of materials, labor, and overhead that has been issued to manufacturing but has not yet produced a stackable item. Depending on how your accounting and inventory systems are set up, it may also include components picked for production usage or finished products awaiting final inspection.
WMS, Warehouse management system
Computer software designed specifically for managing the movement and storage of materials throughout the warehouse. WMS functionality is generally broken down into the following three operations: Putaway, Replenishment, and Picking. The key to these systems is the logic to direct these operations to specific locations based on user defined criteria. WMSs are often set up to integrate with data-collection systems. Read my article on Warehouse Management Systems.
Zone picking
Order picking method where a warehouse is divided into several pick zones, order pickers are assigned to a specific zone and only pick the items in that zone, orders are moved from one zone to the next (usually on conveyor systems) as they are picked (also known as "pick-and-pass"). See also batch picking, wave picking See article on Order Picking.