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I think a.i. can be used to more accurately locate skus based on seasonality, forecasting the seasonality and demands in advance and placing items accordingly. Artificial intelligence can also be used to monitor damage, travel-times, and different location configurations in real time and optimize the inputs or parameters. What is everyone’s thoughts on A.I. in the warehouse regarding benefits, pros, cons, and applications?

I have a large collection of drills with all sizes duplicate in steel for hand drilling and carbide for use with the drill press.

I believe that you should buy the tools that with your work style will produce your required results.  Therefore a tool that one person relies on may not work at all for someone else.  I am naturally clumsy and my success rate using carbide drills Is very low.  On the other hand for me HSS drills enjoy a reasonable life.

Apr 24, 2024 — Cut a dovetail every day for a year and you'll never have to think about it again. That advice ended up being a life lesson.

Rules on the quantity to be held at each SKU’s location can be set e.g. “There must be a minimum of one week’s stock and the location capacity and replenishment point must allow the minimum replenishment quantity to be a carton lot”.

ISRI AIR VALVE seat for ISRI 6800 type air seats fitted to DAF, SCANIA, VOLVO. The DAF Part No 1330806 air valve controls AIRVENT 33285.

It seems like basic logic or common sense, but as warehouse consultants with decades of experience, we’ve found that many companies neglect this practice.

Having said that, these carbide drills can be an economic option in sizes below 1 mm diameter due to their relatively low price and if you don't mind to bin a part from which you cannot extract a broken drill. HSS or SS (not recommended) drills in sizes below 1 mm can be quite pricey, particularly for sizes below 0.5 mm and those with thickened shafts (which are much better and easier to handle).

Fortunately, it’s common for product families to share similar velocity metrics. Still, it might not always be the case, and sometimes there are tradeoffs to evaluate as part of the slotting process.

Past Builds: (Done & sold) 1/8” scale A.J. Fisher 2 mast schooner Challenge, 1/6” scale scratch built whaler Wanderer w/ plans & fittings from A.J. Fisher, and numerous plastic kits including 1/8” scale Revell U.S.S. Constitution (twice), Cutty Sark, and Mayflower.

Tactics for product family grouping are simple enough. If your business supplies a mix of products that sell randomly and others that often ship together, you should try to locate those that ship together in adjacent slots, to speed up the picking process.

But if you have a smaller warehouse with a limited amount of product, you can try to do this yourself. It’s as simple as:

Slotting operationvideo

Also, I didn't write to drill holes with a bur, I used this method as an example, later on writing that the proper bit is better suited for drilling holes.  This was used as an example, not to be taken as a method I'd prefer.  When a true drilling bit breaks, it's mainly because the initial mark was not indented to keep the bit on track, or too much pressure was applied, plus heat causes the material to break down.  I'm writing about drill bits of under 1mm diameter.

Items that are regularly picked together can be located in adjacent locations. In larger pick to conveyor systems, picking activity can be balanced by zone, ensuring there is even product concentration and reduced congestion in pick zone.

Drill body with a small spotting drill at the end. These come in various sizes.  The smallest that I have is a 5/0 drill, which has an 0.010 diameter spotting drill. These are particularly useful when drilling through a rod. The heavy body of the center drill prevents the spotting tip from skating on the rounded surface of the rod

Slotting can allow companies to recognise the mismatch and balance the costs of the resulting inefficiencies and the capital required to re-configure.

In industry drills are shaped for the materials they are supposed to drill. This concerns the cutting angles, secondary cutting angles, relief angles, the angle of the spiral, etc. However, unless you buy from an established manufacturer, you may not be able to get this information. This applies particularly to model supply houses and the hundreds of 'ebay shops' that are around today.

T-slot millingoperation

The above list of data types is not exhaustive, and additional data requirements may exist depending on the nature of your business and its warehousing characteristics.

Carbide is the only way to go.  Lesser quality steel will become blunt quickly, they'll become more expensive than carbide soon.

Product slotting is a warehouse term that involves placing products in optimal locations within a warehouse to enhance operational efficiency.

There are standalone programs, of varying capability, available. If you’d like an impartial analysis of your slotting needs and assistance in selecting an appropriate software solution, our warehouse management consultants will be happy to get involved.

But why not? If slotting is carried out well. the right product will be in the right place, to minimise pick path travel i.e. Time.

Hope to get to builds: MS 3/16” scale Pride of Baltimore II,  MS 1/2” scale pinky schooner Glad Tidings,  a scratch build 3/16” scale  Phantom, and a scratch build 3/16" scale Denis Sullivan.

Product slotting is one of the few cost saving ideas that you can implement in your current facility whilst making no changes to infrastructure (although there may be further benefits to do that).

Slotting operationpdf

Really, interesting article. Based on my 14 years experience in Warehouse Solutions Design I have encountered with different definition and perspective of warehouse Slotting. For instance, the Right Product at the Right Location at the Right Time, but out of 3 drivers 2 are static and 1 is variable (Time). So, do you have any experience or example to manage the variable part (Time). I see time as a variable because of 1.Putway time to location and 2. Picking a time from a location.

Types ofslottingmachine

When I asked my dentist how he disposed of his burs he said he threw them away. Then I asked was it possible to obtain any of them. He readily acceded but said he would have to sterilize or autoclave them first. Went back 3 days later and received a nice baggy of assorted burs over 50. Some had heavy use but cut threw wood like butter.

You should be able to identify such items during your data evaluation, so you can set them aside and exclude them from your slotting strategy.

There are various forms of slotting approaches; macro slotting or profiling are about overall warehouse layout, whereas micro slotting is the detailed placement of product along the pick path relative to the final destination or rally point.

These carbide drills are for use only with a drill press. They are very sharp, very hard and will cleanly drill through any material. However, they are very brittle and the slightest bend, as when drilling with a hand held drill, will snap them immediately. Steel is much more forgiving and will bend without actually loosing its alignment permanently. Carbide drills much better though.

In other words, slow-moving products go up on the top shelves because it takes longer to get them, while faster-moving products come down on the bottom shelves.

At Logistics Bureau, we can provide a fully outsourced service to provide you with slotting recommendations depending on the type of operation you are running.

Color coding as written, pertains to how rough the cut will be, the better quality burs have an immovable color ring, it's painted on.  Concerning HSS, I rarely wasted time and expenses going this route as the material just dulled too quickly.  Also, the only time a carbide bur would break was when overheated while grinding or the sideward pressure applied was too great,  which would show that an improper technique was applied.  You may have noticed before some of these "carbides", or hardened steels are still magnetic, suggesting there would still be steel involved.  Sometimes the hardened heads are attached to steel shafts, not all of time though.  Again, depends on the quality and size.

When implemented correctly, slotting ensures that each product is stored appropriately for its throughput and characteristics. That means reduced exposure to risks of injury caused by lifting, bending, or working at height.

Why would you want to drill a hole with a round burr ? The cutting edges of burrs tends to diminish to zero in the middle, hence 'diving' in with a burr is a very inefficient way of their use and will dull them indeed very quickly. Burrs are meant for side-cutting.

Depending on the size of the hole, when cross-drilling round material or when drilling at an angle into surfaces, I start the hole with an end-mill that cuts across the centre. There is no risk of slipping with the point.

While determining slots based on picking frequency sounds simple, it can be less straightforward in practice. For example, what if you have a lot of fast-moving products?

You can achieve the benefits by simply rearranging products – within existing storage media – to reduce travel distance for pickers in your warehouse.

Slotting applications can be expensive to purchase and require highly technical skills to operate. But the rewards are available for those that persevere.

Mar 20, 2024 — Climb milling, also known as down milling, involves cutting in the direction of the feed, while conventional milling or up milling operates against it.

However, things get somewhat more complicated when you have conflicting objectives, such as slotting by velocity and slotting in product groups.

Generally, the less warehouse inventory you have to deal with, the easier it is. But as mentioned, with larger warehouse operations you can soon find yourself running into issues. However, with warehouse slotting best practices, you can reorganise your entire warehouse to make the picking process easier.

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You can think of it like arranging your refrigerator: everyday items like milk and butter are in the door for easy access, while less frequently used items are stored in the back. It’s the same reason you place your umbrella close to your front door at home, so it’s easy to pick it up and run when it’s raining and you’re late for work.

That’s an interesting perspective. Right Product, Right Place, Right Time is usually used as a definition of Logistics, I have not heard it being used in relation to warehouse slotting.

I would not dismiss HSS just like that. In fact, I found HSS much more forgiving even on my precision watchmaking machinery. Drilling deep holes below 0.5 mm with HSS is much safer than with cobalt due to the greater elasticity of the steel. When they become blunt depends on what you are doing with them and how often.

To start with, find out which products are picked the most and place them as close as possible to what we call the centre of gravity of the warehouse, where dispatch is situated. You look at where the picker starts and place it as close as possible to that point—that’s the golden zone.

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To do a proper analysis though, we need to go a bit more in-depth. Considerations of the product characteristics such as product velocity, dimensions, cube, crushability, toxicity etc. need to be factored into the constraints, along with specific picking strategies that will be unique to your warehouse.

So placing faster moving products closer to the rally point, results in less distance travelled’ less labour time, and hence cost savings. Using ABC analysis we would then place the A products close to rally point and progressively the B and C products further away, thus reducing travel distance. Figure 1 illustrates this product placement.

"Carbide is the only way to go.  Lesser quality steel will become blunt quickly, ...". Carbides are not steels. Carbides are composite materials made by sintering together hard particles of mostly tungsten carbide (WC) with a metal in powder form, mainly cobalt.

In industrial applications, where one can control very precisely the conditions, today carbide is the material of choice, of course.

Note that this means an item picked 100 times over a given period—regardless of how many units are picked—would have priority over an item picked just ten times in that same period, even if this latter product was picked in far larger quantities than the former.

the other approach is to use a center drill, which has a large, rigid     Drill body with a small spotting drill at the end. These come in various sizes.  The smallest that I have is a 5/0 drill, which has an 0.010 diameter spotting drill. These are particularly useful when drilling through a rod. The heavy body of the center drill prevents the spotting tip from skating on the rounded surface of the rod.

Product damage can be reduced by allocating locations according to SKU characteristics (e.g. keeping fragile items away from carton live storage, ensuring that heavy items are located in a sweet zone etc.).

What do you mean by coarsness with reference to colour coding ? I never use the colour coded ones, as the rings tend to obscure your view of what you are doing, but thought that the rings refer to the diameters.

Regardless of which tool you use, you’re going to need the correct information to run the calculations, which means that typically, you will want to feed the following data into your software:

While regular re-slotting is a recommended practice, you don’t want to have to do it within a few months of the original exercise. And remember that you don’t have to slot everything.

One other comment on drilling. One of the easiest ways to break a drill is to have it deflect, or “skate” then it makes contact with the workpiece.  To avoid this you can to punch a pilot hole at the location where you want to drill. The found two wars of doing this. The first is to make a small punch by grinding a point onto an old drill bit. You can chuck the blunt end of the bit into your drill press and then, while it’s rotating, us a grinding wheel in a rotary tool to grind a point on the end of the bit. The punch can (and should) be quite a bit larger than the hole you want to drill. You just want to make a small dimple for the drill bit to rid in. I put the punch in the press, lower tit down until it presses on the workpiece, then replace the punch with the drill bit for the hole I wNt to drill, angry to work.

There seem to be two major supply streams for carbide drills into the secondary market theses days. One is that from 'seconds', meaning these are drills that did not pass the high quality standards of industrial sppliers, but that are still good enough for occasional use by people like us. The second stream are used ones that have been taken out of manufacturing processes in a scheduled way before they become dull and could spoil a work piece. Also these are good enough for us modellers. However, the traders rarely know the intended application of these drills, so you might get some from an aircraft factory intended for use with high-strenght aluminium alloys, or some from a printed circuit board plant, intended for use on glass-fibre reinforced epoxy resin.

He warns, however, that you could cause congestion in the warehouse if you put ALL your fast-moving products near the dispatch—something that would negate the benefits of product slotting. So take that into account when doing your planning.

Let’s look at the basics: what slotting is, scenarios where it may prove useful, the key benefits of slotting and then some tips from decades of experience in the industry.

As mentioned, slotting is all about optimising the placement of warehouse SKUs to gain efficiency, increase productivity, and reduce operational costs.

Mar 21, 2023 — The best way to drill through hardened steel is by applying ample pressure at a downward angle, avoiding tilting or turning. Even the slightest ...

For drilling holes, for instance in brass strips, a drill press or at least some kind of device that keeps the rotating instrument steady is a must in most cases.  Also, using the correct bit for the deed is good advice.  For instance, drilling small holes with a round bur does work, just the bur, even a carbide bur will dull soon.  Whereas a bit used only for drilling holes will last 5 times longer.

Although the bulk stock may be kept in random locations, these can also be split into areas and particular supplier’s SKU’s located randomly but in areas close to their pick-face locations.

That’s because it’s all about picking frequency rather than sales volume, so the product with more picks is the one that gets the most accessible slot.

Roll Tap Drill Size Chart. NOTE: The recommended practice for roll taps is to drill and ream the hole. The thread dimensions are formed by a combination of ...

Slotting is normally restricted to the picking face or online locations only, however it can impose some general rules for stock location in the bulk areas in order to increase replenishment efficiency.

Naturally, if your company specialises in such products, your entire warehouse might be devoted to special storage. If so, your approach to slotting will be as for a regular dry storage warehouse.

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Slottingmachineoperation

The Bruker Alicona Wear Measurement enables you to visualize and quantitatively assess wear on cutting edges based on high-resolution real 3D measurement data.

Just chipping in on this subject as there are some very good comments here.  I use HSS "jobbing bits" as we call them in the UK on wood as they fly though without any issues and never really wear out due to the lack of friction and heat.  They are also easily sharpened when they go dull on a grinding wheel.  For brass, steel and stainless steel I use cobalt bits which are a little more expensive but not overly so.  They last for ages and just go through without any problems as long as they are lubricated if appropriate.  Anything else in modelling is just over kill unless you are using exotic metals which are particularly hard.

The best drill bits for hardened steel are carbide-tipped bits. They are the most suitable drill bits for hardened steel due to their robust and heat-resistant ...

If you’d like to implement an effective slotting strategy and process in your warehouse without diverting your resources from the day-to-day operation, our inventory management consultants will be pleased to take on the task and help you achieve the above benefits.

I think we had such a discussion before. There is actually no 'best' drill, only approriate ones, appropriate for the material and the conditions of application.

PS:  I forgot to add, a wonderful source for every imaginable bit form/shape is from the dental industry.  Often, a dental depot will sell burs and bits less expensive than a hobby shop.  You might have to twist their arm to sell you some, but most will happily agree.

Some times instead of silver colour drills I get black ones. I presume they are some kind of high carbon steel. These are always much sharper and rigid and drill better bur also they are quite brittle. I ve had a couple braking in the wood which indeed is a pain.

Change is inevitable and what was required when the pick-face was designed and installed is more than likely unsuitable for the business profile years ahead.

Whether using a fixed or dynamic strategy, the only pure application of slotting takes place at the micro level. When you hear a reference to macro-slotting, it merely means a looser approach involving the division of the warehouse space into zones.

I believe one should buy the tools one can afford. However, drill-bits and burrs fall (almost) into the category of consumables. There is also a considerable risk of breakage. Therefore, it tends to be more cost efficient to buy twice at half the price, if there is a chance that I break an expensive drill with double the life before it reaches the end of its normal useful life.

John Monck is a Logistics Bureau’s warehouse expert and a specialist in slotting, so we asked him to further explain the concept of product slotting.

This will reduce the replenishment frequency and ensure that stock does not need to be held in an interim location because of lack of location storage capacity.

A number of years ago I bought a set of these.  They were supposedly carbide drills for manufacturing printed circuit boards.  For someone used to using steel twist drills, these were so brittle to be unusable.

screw efficiency, wear rate, service life, friction, linear actuator, motion drive,

I buy the cheap chinese carbides £3/set of 10, the better quality steel rolled or milled drills from ebay but for sizes smaller than 0.8 mm I buy Heller which are expensive but good. In such small sizes the very cheap ones are false ecomomy and cause frustration, even drilling wood.

Over the years I have found this method to be the most reliable but it is most important to have the piece being drilled securely held so that it does not move.

Normally slotting can be done at seasonal changes or every quarter. This irregularity of requirement generally makes it easy to put Slotting on the back burner until there are no fires to fight, and not surprisingly this never happens.

Slotting is a valuable tool; however with the exception of facilities that support campaign sales, it is not a constant requirement.

As noted above by vaddoc, carbide is brittle and normally requires rigid machines and a rigid set-up for their use. They are unforgiving to wobbling in guiding the movement and to changes in feed. In drill depths that exceed 3xdiameter, I would use them only with a screw-feed, not with a lever feed.

Placing them all in one aisle or all at the dispatch-zone end of the aisles could introduce congestion, leading to a slotting strategy that causes more problems than it solves. Therefore, you should consider spreading those fast movers out around the warehouse, or using a secondary metric as a basis for prioritization.

Picking is the activity that consumes the most labour hours in the warehouse, perhaps constituting 50% (or even more) of total person-hours.

Slot millingoperation

Given that many warehouses combine full-pallet picking by forklift with manual pallet building for smaller orders and perhaps some other methods, it’s easy to see how slotting optimisation can become quite a conundrum. That’s why it can pay to get help from a consulting team that works with slotting strategies all the time.

IMO Cobalt HSS drills made for professional jewelers are the best compromise as they offer long life for anything but drilling high carbon steel while not being nearly so fragile as carbide.

Heavy items can be placed at the beginning of pick runs ensuring that they are placed on a pallet or in a tote/carton first to eliminate crushing of other product.

That’s why slotting is such a worthwhile initiative, because picking productivity can be improved by Slotting product according to movement characteristics. Fast movers can be located closer to conveyors and aisles to reduce travel, and in easy to access locations (we call them sweet spots).

Slotting requires the analysis of accurate SKU and transaction data. The SKU data, usually the Product Master File, (PMF), must be maintained and changes in packaging, dimensions and units of sale etc. captured before the product hits the floor.

And using a tungsten center punch or awl is never a bad idea even using a stiff centering drill when drilling curved stock if you can't do Wefalk's trick for some reason. I also have a very spiffy laser center finder that properly calibrated will mark the center within a couple thousandths of an inch, which is fine for anything but the most precise work. Very useful if one can fit in the budget.

(Done & in dry dock) Modified 1/8” scale Revell U.S.S. Constitution w/ wooden deck and masting [too close encounter w/conc. floor in move]

The re-slotting of an entire pick-face is an expensive time consuming business. The approach should be that only those SKU’s that are the most badly located are identified and re-slotted in each slotting exercise.

If you have a large, complex warehouse accommodating hundreds of products and employing dozens of workers, trying to work out an efficient product slotting system on a whiteboard would be a long-winded process.

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Hobby shops, indeed, are rarely a cost-effective source for tools. They only sell small quantities in comparison. Jewellery/watchmaking/dental supply houses are better sources with a wider range of choices. A new business area that has greatly expanded over the past ten years or so are manicure and pedicure supply houses - they supply the same kind of burrs and polishing tools to a much larger market and hence at lower prices.

Essentially, it’s about organising products so that frequently picked items are easily accessible, reducing the travel time for pickers.

After all, once you have completed your slotting project, the last thing you want is to find that some SKUs placed in the most accessible slots start to decline in popularity and that others overtake them.

Continual Slotting will highlight any mismatch between the pick-face configuration and the requirements of the SKU range, throughputs and slotting rules.

Slotting operationprocedure pdf

High level Slotting is a minimum requirement for the implementation of a new facility. In comparison, detailed Slotting is relatively rare in either new or existing operations.

There are many Slotting software tools available. The major Warehouse Management System (WMS) suppliers normally have a slotting module in their software suite.

I use these drills almost exclusively, unless I am using a pin vise.  That includes free-handing with a Dremel.  You simply need a steady hand.  No problem drilling through brass strips but I have never tried using them on bar stock thicker than 1/8".  Take a peak at the offerings from Drill Bit City.  https://drillcity.stores.yahoo.net/index.html   They are in the Chicago area and I receive orders from them typically within 3 days.

The pace at which products move out of the warehouse is the metric that logistics managers typically prioritise in a slotting project.

And: there are many different qualities of aluminium, brass and steel. Some are easy to drill and others are a pain. We modellers often seem to come across too soft qualities that catch drills. So a problem may not be a bad drill, but bad material.

Dave, the selection Toni showed is a wonderful collection.  The colored bands are only a reference to the coarseness of the individual bit.  Their individual usage is for the most part a matter of speed used and/or material that needs cutting/grinding.

Often, the direct benefits that you see from warehouse slotting optimisation will have a knock-on effect on other aspects of your warehouse processes too. Let’s look at them in more detail.

Honestly though, the most outstanding visual satisfaction comes from the noticeable difference in how a warehouse looks after the slotting results have been implemented and all the SKUs are in their defined locations.

Here at Logistics Bureau, we’ve helped countless warehouse operators to implement slotting strategies and we get a ton of satisfaction from seeing our clients’ surprise at the gains in picking productivity.

Operations with a large number of SKU’s usually have product or family groups that are supplied by a single or few suppliers. Slotting can allow the grouping of these products within areas of the pick-face reducing the travel required to replenish directly from receipt.

Current fleet, plastic;  Cutty Sark, Revell 1975,  Gorch Fock, Heller 1986,  Royal Louis, Heller 1988,  Amerigo Vespucci, Heller 1990

Hello wefalck, a couple of your observations, especially concerning a quote, are incorrect.  For instance, I didn't state directly that carbide was a steel.

Seasonal changes – e.g. out with the sun tan products in with the cold and flu SKU’s – should be planned in advance and the requirements factored into the initial pick-face configuration.

If you would like us to audit a new warehouse design, come and undertake a one off slotting review of your current setup, or assist in a seasonal manner to cope with your business changes, we can help you.

In our experience, it rarely makes too much sense to dwell on any distinction between micro and macro slotting. The terms merely relate to the level of detail you assign to your slotting strategy.

Of course a modeler can choose whichever method he deems fit.  I chose with this reply to clear up a few of my points since you seemed to misrepresent or misunderstood what I'd previously written.  I try to make clear statements to keep things like this at a minimum, I'll try harder for the future.

Beyond these benefits, when slotting is done correctly, it’s also advantageous from health, safety, and service perspectives. The main benefits we see are:

In fact, determining individual slot locations for every SKU in a warehouse is rarely necessary and can even be unhelpful. This is because most warehouse operations handle some products that have minimal impacts on workload, efficiency, or cost.

This in turn requires the implementation and enforcement of supplier standards and protocols for the introduction of new products. Buyers/marketing should supply estimates of likely demand for all new products. S&OP must be on the ball so there are no surprise promotions etc.

And, one of the key things you can do in your warehouse to improve the productivity of your staff as far as picking and packing go is to institute a system of product slotting.

Examples include discrete pick (as assignment per order), consolidated orders, often used when discrete picking happens at the customer venue, and so on. The storage medium and its specific relationship to the rally point, often a staging area prior to dispatch and finally developing the rules by which to slot specific products to specific locations.

Warehouse managers should identify the 20 percent of their products that take up 80 percent of warehouse activity and place them in what he calls the golden zone.

You want to get those fast-moving products nearer to dispatch, so it’s important not only to think horizontally but vertically as well.

If warehouse product slotting increases productivity and efficiency in picking, thereby reducing warehouse costs, it stands to reason that it does the same for replenishment and put-away activities.

Apart from the technical aspects of special storage, slotting products with specific storage requirements is relatively straightforward. In most cases, you will keep all products with shared special storage needs together in a zone with the appropriate equipment and environment.

Slottingmachine tools

The most common way to determine the velocity is through ABC analysis, using order lines as the velocity indicator. The idea is to get the products picked most often stored at the front of the warehouse, closest to the dispatch zone.

You need sophisticated software to manage this – if there is any degree of complexity, you’ve got to do it properly, so the use of digital technology is invaluable.

The time element is usually a KPI that is used within the warehouse management system (WMS) reporting, so as to measure productivity. That might be expressed as picks per hour, rather than travel time.

This benefit is probably more of a side effect rather than a primary goal of product slotting, but one that nonetheless highlights why slotting is such a critical facet of effective warehouse management.

The Nautical Research Guild has published our world-renowned quarterly magazine, The Nautical Research Journal, since 1955. The pages of the Journal are full of articles by accomplished ship modelers who show you how they create those exquisite details on their models, and by maritime historians who show you the correct details to build. The Journal is available in both print and digital editions. Go to the NRG web site (www.thenrg.org) to download a complimentary digital copy of the Journal. The NRG also publishes plan sets, books and compilations of back issues of the Journal and the former Ships in Scale and Model Ship Builder magazines.

Slotting can help you maximise efficiency and make the most of your storage space, which is extremely important if you have a limited storage capacity.

I see alot of micro sized bits being marketed for PCB or CNC  that have a short length of bit with 1/8" shaft and a colored plastic collar.  Are these any good for drilling metal or just for soft materials like wood or plastic?  For one thing most are listed as manufactured in China, so I'm a little skeptical of the quality.

Current fleet, plastic;  Cutty Sark, Revell 1975,  Gorch Fock, Heller 1986,  Royal Louis, Heller 1988,  Amerigo Vespucci, Heller 1990

Slotting is not a panacea, and to be effective needs the support and input from areas other than the warehouse operation.

Now you know what slotting is, how do you know whether it’s something that would be worthwhile for your company? After helping many clients with their warehouse slotting process, we find that the same scenarios keep popping up.

DEWALT offers a full range of corded and cordless drills to meet every drilling need, including stud and joist, variable speed and corded and more.

Slotting strategies often involve placing the fastest-moving SKUs close to the warehouse dispatch zones, which helps to minimise picking operatives’ travel distances and times. This is the key benefit to maintaining a proper slotting strategy.

The plastic bands around the shaft are red = coarse, blue = middle, yellow = fine.  I believe there are also green bands, but I haven't a clue as to their usage, never had one.

Before we move on, here’s one last tip that you might find helpful. When you analyse the picking velocity of your products, you will naturally want to use your order history. However, we recommend that you incorporate forecast velocity if possible.

And, we’ve also found that by implementing a sound warehouse slotting strategy, we’ve helped clients reduce their labour costs by up to 30%.

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