Pick to Totes

The Kiva material handling system enables operators to pick items and cases into totes for kitting, store replenishment and internal order transfers.  Mobile robotic drive units bring inventory pods to workers who use a simple pick-to-light/put-to-light interface to fill each order. The operator completes the entire order without moving from their pick station and typically picks multiple orders at the same time. In addition, the system controls the sequence in which items are retrieved, allowing heavy-to-light tote loading, layered picks, picks by product group, and pick-to-plan-o-gram for store restocking.

Features of Using Totes

Fast Picking - The operator is presented with a new pick face location every six seconds, as if they had infinite pick face density with zero walking.  Picks can be from inventory shelving pods or from full pallets on pod pallet bases.

High Volume Order Picking - Kiva customers pick hundreds of thousands of lines per day into totes for store re-stocking from a single facility using the Kiva order fulfillment system.

Flexible Tote Induction - Prior to picking, totes must be inducted for processing.  This can either be done at special induction stations where the totes are assigned to specific orders then placed on shuttles and taken to pick stations then on to shipping.  Or, totes may be inducted right at the pick station and pushed onto take-away conveyors for finishing and shipping.

Kitting, Layering and Grouping - The Kiva solution can present inventory in any order for picking.  This allows customers to implement kitting, layering and grouping strategies for order processing without having to think about warehouse layouts.  Some customers pick a layer of a product family then add a tote divider and pick another layer consisting of a different product family so that the product in the totes is easily put away by the final customer.

Pick Verification - The pick-to-light, put-to-light and barcode scanning tasks are configurable to suit a customer's specific workflow.  Some customers scan every item upon every pick.  Some customers only scan one item when multiples of the same are ordered, and then confirm the quantity via the station computer screen or rack light buttons.  Some customers do not scan-at-pick because they scan during replenishment, their inventory and bin accuracy is very high and they are shipping to internal customers.