SHOPIFY LOGISTICS
PUTAWAY - WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION|NATIVE APP
2022-2023
SUMMARY
The 'Putaway' workflow involves moving items from a storage area to a place where inventory can be easily accessed and picked for order fulfillment. The term covers tasks related to both restocking and organizing inventory. The process requires that each unit moved from one location to another is recorded with the warehouse management system (WMS), in order to keep track of product quantity and condition.
Because every unit has to be accounted for, the accuracy of the entire inventory depends on a person counting correctly while doing physical work. Our task was to optimize the workflow for speed, and to reduce the cognitive effort and potential for human error the count demanded.
PROBLEM + OPPORTUNITY
Problem
Every unit moved during Putaway has to be recorded in the WMS, which meant associates were holding a running count in their heads while working, then trusting that number to be right. They had already invented a workaround for it — repurposing the number pad to tally units in manageable increments so their final count stayed accurate. That workaround was doing real work the tool wasn't, and it was happening inside a nine-step flow that included steps most Putaway instances never needed.
Opportunity
The workaround was the insight. If associates were already breaking counts into increments, the system could take that work off them entirely — handling the arithmetic and reporting how much was left to store, so accuracy stopped depending on memory. And because incremental entry isn't needed for most Putaway instances, the number pad could come out of the primary flow altogether: deprioritised, clearly labelled, and there when it's genuinely useful rather than in everyone's way by default.
RESEARCH + DEFINITION
Capturing the complete user journey of the Putaway process was crucial in order to identify key issues and comprehend the connection between each step in the GUI and the actual user experience.
Putaway user flow workshop.
This workshop involved active participation from essential stakeholders and subject matter experts, to extract the real-time experience of associates while storing units in picking locations. Participants included myself, operations managers, warehouse associates, warehouse supervisors, engineers, and product managers. As a collective team, we successfully mapped and pinpointed areas of concern, as well as identified opportunities for future optimizations and improvements.
SOLUTION
To address this, we redesigned the quantity step so the system carries the count rather than the associate — then removed the steps that redesign made unnecessary.
1
Partial Quantity
Associates discovered a creative method of using the number pad to track units in manageable increments for themselves, in order to keep their final number accurate. This opened up an opportunity to enhance our workflow and features: intentionally incorporating functionality that not only assists associates in counting units, but also helps them maintain an accurate count within our tool's design. Hence, the 'Partial Quantity' feature was created.
By employing this approach, the robot becomes capable of aiding associates by handling the calculations and notifying them of the remaining amount to be stored in the container. As a result, associates can conserve cognitive energy and minimize the likelihood of human error.
Here the associate counts the number of items on their Chuck. If they come up short of 76 units they select 'Partial Quantity'
Here the associate must now enter the actual number of units they have in their Chuck - in this case only 20 of the 76 expected.
Here the Chuck screen shows an update inventory log of Total expected versus quantity outstanding to place.
Here the associate counts the number of items on their Chuck. If they come up short of 76 units they select 'Partial Quantity'
2
Confirmation before placement
The count only helps if it's the count that gets recorded. Each quantity is confirmed against the item and the container before the associate places anything, and the location is scanned at the point of placement — so the physical action and the WMS record are captured in the same moment rather than reconciled afterwards.
3
Streamlining the primary flow
Through extensive research, gathering insights from key stakeholders, and observing the tool in real-time, we discovered several opportunities to streamline the Putaway workflow. We identified certain steps that, while beneficial in specific scenarios, were unnecessary for the majority of Putaway instances. Consequently, for cases where associates do not need to enter units in increments, the number pad screen became an additional step to bypass.
Therefore, when implementing the 'Partial Quantity' feature, it made sense to remove the number pad screen from the primary flow, deprioritize it, and clearly label the corresponding button.
Deprioritized, not removed
The number pad still matters to the associates who use it as a tally — it's the behaviour that started this work. So the decision was to take it off the default path rather than out of the product: one clearly labelled button away for the minority who need it, and invisible to the majority who don't. Removing a step for most people shouldn't mean removing a capability from anyone.
PARTIAL QUANTITY | PUTAWAY DESIGN
