PUTAWAY OPTIMIZATION
SHOPIFY LOGISTICS· WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION · ROBOT INTERACTION
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. That work is done with Chuck.
MEET CHUCK
Chuck is a mobile fulfilment robot that carries totes of inventory through the warehouse and meets the associate at each put location. Chuck's screen is the interface my team and I designed.
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A 10-inch touchscreen mounted on the robot, roughly 1,480 mm off the floor — not a handheld. The associate reads it standing at the rack, hands full of stock.
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A multi-level tote rack, six addressed bins, so the screen has to say which bin to take from.
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A fixed-mount barcode scanner, which is how every confirmation is made.
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Chuck navigates itself. Between locations the screen becomes wayfinding — destination code, direction, and the route it's taking.
PROBLEM + OPPORTUNITY
Problem
Every unit moved has to be recorded, which meant associates held a running count in their heads while working, then trusted that number to be right. They had already invented a workaround: 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 — 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 — and the number pad could come out of the primary flow for the majority who never needed it.
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
Operations managers, warehouse associates, supervisors, engineers and product managers, mapping the real-time experience of storing units in picking locations.
The most valuable thing to come out of it wasn't a pain point on a map. It was watching how associates had already adapted the tool to fit the way they count.
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.
01
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.
STATE SEQUENCE
PARTIAL PUTAWAY WORKFLOW
CHUCK WORKFLOW
02
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.
03
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.
ENHANCE PROMPT | PROMPT BAR DESIGN
impact
15-20%
istock lift
A marketing site redesign that lifted conversion 42%
8%
getty images lift
Two minutes off every putaway task
Left on
Shipped a first-of-its-kind procurement site
customer keep it enabled
A simpler rule
The 20-word threshold was removed. Enhancement became unconditional when the setting is on, replacing a hidden condition with a single visible control.
Where it helps most
The feature helps most exactly where prompt-writing skill is lowest — the same reason it was expected to matter for non-English users.