Descartes® is pleased to announce the latest release of Peoplevox. This update includes a range of fixes and improvements related to the new cycle count action. Below, you'll find a summary of the changes implemented in this version. For any questions about specific items, please reference the associated number (if provided) when contacting Descartes Customer Support.
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Highlights
New cycle count action - available now
In the last release, we announced our new cycle count feature, which automatically creates cycle count actions to guide mobile operators to stock take locations on a regular basis.
After resolving a few initial technical difficulties, we're now ready to activate the new cycle count actions. Additional improvements for stock take and cycle counting are included in this release, with more enhancements planned for the future. See the resolved issues section for details.
New cycle count action - coming soon
This is just the first release of our new and improved cycle count workflow, but we have a host of other changes and improvements still in the works.
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In the initial release, the cycle count workflow will allow you to count items in a location. In the next updates, we will be extending this to support:
Counting items in the location
Counting containers in the location
Clearing the location entirely
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Currently, a cycle count generates a variance to be approved through the existing web app or mobile variance approval process. In one of the next major updates, we plan to update that web app variance approval workflow. Some changes that will come as part of that:
The ability to define automatic variance approval thresholds, so that you can save time by auto-approving low-variance counts, and focus more on counts with a higher deviation.
An updated, cleaner interface, that clearly indicates the expected item count, the actual item count, and separately lists any changes to containers.
In addition to those changes, we have also received a wide range of excellent suggestions that we are aiming to incorporate. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but some of those suggestions include:
Adding the ability for mobile operators to quickly indicate that a location is empty as a part of other actions - for example after they pick the last item from a location. This would save you a huge amount of time, by drastically cutting down on the number of cycle count actions that send operators to go and check empty locations.
Allowing variances to be approved line-by-line, while leaving some lines unapproved for review later. This would allow supervisors to quickly approve variances that they believe are safe, while still retaining control over more granular item-level deviations.
Adding an indicator to the variance approval workflow to show previous variances, to allow supervisors to determine whether a given variance is typical for a particular location, and help to identify patterns in high-variance counts.
We are keen to hear any feedback you have on this first release, as well as suggestions for future improvements. Please reach out if you have any questions or ideas.
New Features and Enhancements
🟨 Simplified action names (1256806)
As part of the ongoing action creation improvements, we have simplified the naming of several pick methods. The updated names are listed below.
PICK: 1 person picks 1 sales order at a time -> 1 person picks 1 order
PICK: 1 person picks multiple sales orders in a batch - orders -> Multi-order batch pick - orders
PICK: Single item batch picking, with scan, assign & print invoice at pack bench -> Single item batch picking
PICK: 1 person picks multiple sales orders in a batch - items -> Multi-order batch pick - items
🟨 Expanded action screens (1256799)
We've been steadily improving the new actions screens. The new "View actions" page displays details of recently created actions, and has been expanded to also show any advanced action creation options that were selected (zone filtering, IP sequence reversal, etc.).
We are also extending the action creation activity page to show actions for another two action types: "pick and sort to trolley", and "multi-order batch pick - orders".
Resolved Issues
🟩 Fixed an issue that prevented cycle count actions from being created correctly, even if the frequency was set on the location. With this release, cycle count actions should be successfully created for any locations that have an appropriate frequency defined. (1282172)
🟩 Fixed an issue on the locations page of the web application that forced the user to provide a stock take frequency when creating a location. The frequency is now correctly defined as optional. (1270543)
🟩 Fixed a bug that could cause the TotalCount to be incorrect on some responses when running reports via the GetReportData API method. (1227689)
🟩 Fixed a bug that could prevent the sales margin report from being run correctly via the API. (690266)
🟩 Fixed a bug that could cause old failed actions to seem as though they were reappearing after a period of time. The root cause of this issue was that those failed actions were hidden as long as there was no stock for the corresponding products in the location. The failed actions will now always be visible until they are resolved. As a result of this fix, you may see some old failed actions that were previously hidden - please handle these as you would with any new skips leading to failed actions. (1251293)
🟩 Fixed a bug that caused an error to appear when scanning certain sales order item lines during the returns workflow on the web application. (1285005)
Preview of Changes Coming Soon
Put away improvements
We’re working on several improvements to the put away process. Below is a brief summary of some of the challenges that were identified and our current thinking around potential solutions. We would love to hear your feedback on these topics as well.
🟦 We're updating the new put away rules to better consider previous location usage for each item. Currently, the rules allow you to guide operators to a previously-used location, but do not allow you to define a sort condition to ensure that it is the most recently used previous location. We're still experimenting on the best way to solve this, but our current line of development is to provide a filter condition that will specifically look at the most recently used location of a given type (pick, bulk, quarantine, potentially despatch if useful).
🟦 In addition, we are working on a series of improvements to enhance the performance of the rules. Each rule relies heavily on live, up-to-date information about the current state of the warehouse, which can often mean running some complex calculations during the rules. We are exploring ways to save more of that data during other warehouse transactions so that the rules can simply read information rather than having to run a complex calculation.
🟦 Finally, the team is exploring ways to prevent the rules from providing the same location suggestion for multiple products in a batch. Specifically, if multiple products need to be put away to an empty location. Currently, each put away suggestion is generated in isolation, without context of any other rules being run, and the suggestions for all products in a batch are generated at the same time. This means that if one rule directs a product to an empty location, a second rule for a different product may direct the user to the same empty location because it still views it as empty. We're planning a two-step solution here:
Initially, we're looking to introduce an automatic refresh of suggestions that may be "stale" before we show them to the mobile operator. For example, if the first item directs the user to an empty LocationA, then before we show the next suggested item(s) bound for LocationA, we refresh the suggestions. That will introduce a small delay while the system recalculates the destination, so we will also provide a role-level permission or configuration switch to allow you to decide whether that delay is more impactful than having the operator skip the put away.
Longer-term, we want to expand the put away rules to generate actions, the same way we would for a pick or a replenishment. This would allow each rule to have context of any suggestions that have already been made, including those being performed by other operators. This part is contingent on some of the ongoing action creation work, so we will need a little more time before we can implement this piece.
Descartes ShipRush
You can also find the latest release notes for ShipRush here: