f) Picking & Confirmation
STEEL MANAGER III steel inventory control software has been designed to ensure the utmost accuracy in picking the correct material to satisfy the customer's order requirements. Two methods of achieving this are provided by the system. In both instances, the white copy of the work order is the starting point.
White Copy Picking
In the first method, the picker writes the tag number of picked material directly on the white copy of the work order. When the order has been completely picked, it is sent to the shipping office. Here the hand written details will be entered through the "picking confirmation" screen.
Hand-held Picking
The second method makes use of bar coding and hand held technology. Here the operator initially scans the work order bar code. Thereafter tagged bar codes are scanned systematically until the order is complete. Steel Manager III will automatically match up the scanned input to the correct work order line. Where there is a duplicate when matching, a window will pop open for the correct line to be identified. Most clerical errors are eliminated using this method and limiting the amount of keyboard entry.
To expedite operations, Steel Manager III provides the ability to pick and confirm transient tags (see Pre-Receiving). In these cases, the invoice can be produced only after the material has been received into inventory and the transient tags are converted into regular tags.
Random Length Picking
Random length long products present no challenge to SM3 metal center software. Whenever a random length tag is selected during inventory picking, an "input random length" screen is opened. Here the operator can enter the exact lengths of each item picked so that accurate theoretical weights are returned. See figure 7.2.
