A warehouse management system
Receiving, put away, picking and despatch, on one record.
Nylonite runs pallet operations from handheld scanners. Every scan writes an event holding what was scanned, the location, the operator and the time. Those events are the stock record.
Read the design record- Migrations
- 91
- Decisions
- 169
- Invariants
- 73
- Tests
- 325
02 The survey
Locations are measured on site.
A location record holds x_mm, y_mm, z_mm, the clear opening it offers and the weight it will take. Someone walks the building with an instrument to establish those figures, and the reading, the operator and the date are stored with them.
Figures that arrived in an import are flagged as unmeasured. Work cannot be scheduled against a location until it has been surveyed.
03 Receive
What arrived, beside what was advised.
Goods in starts with a scan of the SSCC label. Nylonite records the quantity, weight and condition observed at the dock and keeps the supplier's advice next to it. Both figures stay on the consignment, so a short delivery can still be answered weeks later.
Goods in · consignment 4471 SSCC 393 1234 5000 0000 17
Weighed 18.4 kg · 0.40 a carton across 14 receipts · the scale agrees with 46
04 Put away
Placement is stored as a movement.
Build a pallet and it gets one label with one number on it. Scanning that number moves everything on the pallet at once, so the rack holds one thing instead of forty cartons. Putting it away appends a movement: where it came from, where it went, who, which truck, when.
Where anything is now is read back from those movements. Nothing overwrites a position, so the pallet that went to A-03-B-2 — zone, aisle, bay, level — can still be asked about after it has left.
05 Findings
A scan that disagrees raises a finding.
Six comparable products were reviewed. Where a scan disagrees with the stored figure, all six overwrite it and keep no trace of the difference. Nylonite keeps both numbers and opens a finding against the item. The finding stays attached to the stock, so it is still there after the pallet has moved.
Finding · measurement disagreement F‑1184
Recorded by K. Phillips · handheld 04 −20.1 %
06 Pick
Pick runs are sequenced before they are issued.
Nylonite runs A* across the aisle graph, then orders the stops to shorten the walk. The picker is given the run in the order to walk it. Each pick writes a movement out of storage with its own time and operator.
Pick run · sequenced 0/197 m
- 01 C-04-A-2 21 m
- 02 A-11-B-1 77 m
- 03 G-09-A-3 148 m
197 m, not 230 — A* over the aisle graph, 2-opt over the stops 3 lines, resequenced
07 Despatch
The bench knows what the pallet should weigh.
The pack comes from the carton dimensions: how many cartons fit, how many layers deep, and whether any of it overhangs. The packer weighs what they built, and Nylonite checks that figure against every pallet of the same lines it has weighed before.
From the moment it is sealed, the pallet and its paperwork carry the same number, and the movement out of the warehouse is on the record.
Bench 1 · SO-18042 Incom Freight
Sealing writes the SSCC and prints the label and the note
08 The record
Every event stays on the record.
A scan, a movement and a finding all become events, each carrying its time, its operator and the device it came from. Nothing is edited in place, so the position and condition of any pallet on any past date is rebuilt from the log rather than looked up.
Read the design recordEvent log · 4 September 7 events
- 09:41 scan Consignment 4471 · 46 counted, 48 advised
- 09:41 finding F-1207 · two short, photographed
- 09:52 movement Dock 2 → A-03-B-2
- 11:06 movement C-04-A-2 → SO-18042
- 11:09 movement A-11-B-1 → SO-18042
- 11:14 movement G-09-A-3 → SO-18042
- 11:31 scan SO-18042 sealed · SSCC 393 1234 5000 0004 82
What was in A-03-B-2 at ten o'clock? Built from these, not stored