Guided Picking with SAP Handheld Scanners

After using our standard Goods Issue to Production Order SAP barcoding screen for a while, our customer asked us to modify the SAP barcode scanner screen to present a guided picking experience for their users.

In their SAP system, any particular picking ticket usually includes only a subset of all the line items from the underlying Reservation, so they wanted the SAP barcode screen to help the user pick only the desired line items. They also wanted the screen to challenge both the location and the material as the user picked the item, to cut down on mis-picks.

The standard out-of-the-box SAP barcode screen retrieves from SAP all the open Reservation lines for the selected Production Order. Then the user can enter pick quantities against any of those lines, in any order, by scanning the material number or selecting a specific line-item from a picklist on their SAP handheld scanner.

For the customized SAP scanner screen, we added checkboxes to the line-item list and removed the standard selection fields. This lets the user check off the line items that match his picking ticket.

After the user confirms his line-item selections, he proceeds to guided picking. The screen shows the storage location for the next line item, along with a challenge prompt. When the user arrives at that location in the warehouse, he scans the barcode posted there. Matching values confirm the user is in the correct location. The screen then shows the material to pick. The user finds that material and scans its barcode. When the values match, the user can enter the actual pick quantity.

The user proceeds in this way through all the selected pick list items, and finishes with the goods movement posting to SAP, and optional label printing.

For the irrationally curious, more information is provided here regarding the standard out-of-the-box behavior of the MB1A Goods Issue to Production Order SAP barcoding screen. And see here for more details about label printing with SAP barcode scanners.