Function · Picking
openWCS already plans the pick (allocation, cubing and batch planning are Built), and now the guided operator pick screen is Built too, now as an installable, scanner-first PWA for rugged RF handhelds. Pick-by-light / voice and the full goods-to-person station workflow remain Built.
✓ Scanner-first RF picking is built and live today: an installable PWA, keyboard-wedge scanning and an offline confirm queue. Pick-by-light / voice and the full GTP-station workflow remain on the roadmap.
Want to try it? Pick five totes at the goods-to-person station in the read-only live demo (no login, nothing saved).
Built today
Before anyone touches a tote, the hard decisions are made: what stock to commit, how it fits a container, and how to group lines into efficient work.
Orders are allocated to specific stock, respecting availability and the location model — so each line points at a real, reachable unit before work is released.
Lines are fitted into containers across multiple carton/tote sizes, so the planner knows how many of which size a set of orders needs before it hits the floor.
Batch-pick planning groups order lines into efficient pick work, the basis for wave / batch picking — the planning that execution will later drive against.
Execution: in operators' hands
The operator picking screen, pick-to-light and the full goods-to-person station workflow are all built and live. Voice guidance is the one remaining planned seam.
A guided RF-style picking screen walks the operator through the pick queue: a big next-pick card with location, SKU code, name and image, and quantity, then Confirm or Short (Enter confirms) to advance. Each confirm posts a Picked transaction and decrements stock; the queue is fed by the order-management pick-task endpoints over released, allocated outbound lines.
Built: the Picking screen is an installable PWA built for rugged Android handhelds in keyboard-wedge mode. Operators scan the location then the SKU; a wrong scan warns and vibrates, a full-quantity scan auto-confirms. An offline confirm queue holds picks through a Wi-Fi blip, so the handheld never loses work. Pick-by-light and pick-by-voice are still planned.
Built: the full GTP-station workflow — presenting HUs, rendering the pick by layout (1-to-1, batch slots, or put-wall), driving pick-to-light on the cubbies, releasing the carrier — on top of the ASRS retrieval that already brings units to the station.
Reliable fulfilment
Confirming a pick does the right thing to the books, not just decrement a number. It checks what is actually on hand, releases the order's reservation so availability stays honest, and records who picked it.
Before a pick is booked, openWCS reads what is pickable at that location and clamps the booked quantity to what is on hand, marking the line short if it has to. Even if something slips through, the stock projection refuses to take a quantity below zero. A miskey or a double scan never produces negative stock.
A pick consumes the order line's reservation as it draws the stock down, so available-to-promise is not double-counted. What is shown as free to promise stays accurate the moment a pick happens, not after a later reconciliation.
Each pick records the operator who did it, the handheld process run it came from, and the order type, so any stock movement is traceable back to a person and a flow without a forensic dig.
At a glance
order ─► allocate → cube → batch-plan → scanner-first RF pick (PWA) (built)
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pick-to-light · GTP station (built)
Open & honest
The planning that feeds picking is the same engine behind slotting and ASRS retrieval. Execution is tracked in the open.