By Roberto Michel · October 6, 2021
Pick-to-light and put-to-light solutions with hardwired lights are widely 
used because they’re effective at helping operators efficiently and accurately pick smaller items at a fast rate.
That’s the plus side of traditional, wired systems. But they do have a downside, led by a fair measure of inflexibility, in that it takes time and cost to install new systems or reconfigure existing ones. But wired pick-to-light modules and put wall solutions wouldn’t be so widely used if they weren’t effective.
“There are some opportunities where pick-to-light just really stands out,” says Chris Bratten, software sales manager at Bastian Solutions. “Being an independent integrator, what we’ve seen is that if you have a very small pick face—a lot of locations in a small area—pick-to-light is highly effective because there’s little travel involved, and the majority of the task time is on location acquisition, which is where lights really help.”
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Lights are turning up in more automation, and in all these solutions, the value is ultimately software driven. The light hardware may present the visuals, but it’s the capabilities within the inventory, warehouse execution or fulfillment software a vendor offers that releases the work, and triggers the lights to do their thing.
That makes examination of the software a key part of a light-directed solution decision. As Bratten observes, “it is the software that is driving the tasks, triggering the lights and messages, and how the system responds to tasks complete.”
Read the full article on MMH.com.