Client's Challenge
Medi-Market sells parapharmaceutical products both online and offline, which demands an optimal organization of their stock for both (sales) platforms. Due to rapid growth they’re about to deploy a part of their warehouse they weren’t currently using. They asked us to help them organize their stock and finetune their operational processes in ‘the best possible way’. In former times this would mean: draw plans, carry them out and physically change everything that doesn’t work accordingly. By building a Digital Twin, we offer the possibility of doing this digitally without lifting a single product, box or rack.
Our Solution
To help Medi-Market with this challenge, we built a Digital Twin that is accessible through a standard web browser and offers the following features:
- 2D / 3D visualization Based on the blueprint and plans, we built a virtual model of their warehouse, visualizing both the actual and historical stock situation(s): Which product is located where? How does picking / putaway occur? Etc… All information can be assessed contextually with respect to both the geometrical layout of the warehouse and the timeline of their occurrence. Besides this, the web app allows users to focus on a certain timeframe or area in the warehouse and gain detailed insights. Everything can be consulted in a 2D or 3D manner, depending on the required view.
- Product popularity heatmap The twin visualizes the location of every product in the warehouse based on the Warehouse Management System. Products can be color coded in terms of market demand, making it possible to (re)organize the warehouse layout so that more oftenly picked products are most accessible. You can also select every product to see more information or details on the order picking assignment.
- Congestion heatmap By means of heatmaps, the twin visualizes the way order pickers work and move through the warehouse: Where do hot zones arise? At what time is which region in the warehouse the most frequently visited? Etc.. This way you can uncover and / or predict possible congestions and resolve them digitally before having to rearrange the warehouse physically.
- Movement path visualization How do order pickers move throughout the warehouse? What are the actual paths they walk (or drive)? What is the best order to pick their products? How far do they (have to) travel per picking sequence? And what is their (optimal) average speed? The twin offers contextual answers or insights to all of these questions. Hereby, it allows you to decide in a better, fully data-driven way whether certain products need to be placed elsewhere so that order pickers can work more efficiently.
The project is currently being used by Medi-Market to get used to working with a Digital Twin and discover its potential. On our part, we’re starting a second phase in which we’ll bring it to the next level by adding new features. Based on the (new) insights it provides, we focus further on implementing AI-analysis as well as bringing in more data: Which warehouse layout(s) allow the most optimal picking / putaway movements? In general or based on predicted market demands in certain periods? How substantial is the difference between such a “winter” and “summer” layout? Once the Digital Twin becomes capable of providing those insights, the only thing left is to make sure its state is being reflected in the real, physical warehouse as efficient as possible.
