Reference Implementation Integration Strategy

OptiSlot uses three XML files to slot location-item pairs, namely, the Project file, Slots file, and Items file. Sterling Warehouse Management System mandates that the names of the files be Project.xml, location.xml, and item.xml.

The Slots file contains information about zones and locations. This file also contains statistics, such as the number of times a location is accessed. The information in the Slots file isused by OptiSlot in performing slotting.

The Items file contains information about case and pallet dimensions, quantity of items, velocity of items, stacking pattern of items in a location, and so forth.

The Project file contains information about existing SKU dedications, goals, preferences, and constraints on the basis of which slotting is performed. The Project file is generated based on the template file provided by Sterling Warehouse Management System. The template file contains preferences for slotting. This template file is located in the <INSTALL_DIR>/repository/xapi/template/merged/slotting/OptiSlot directory.

After these files are sent to OptiSlot, OptiSlot slots the different locations of the zone provided in the Slots file and assigns these slots to the different SKUs provided in the Items file, based on the goals, preferences, and constraints present in the Project file. Slot assignments are returned by OptiSlot™, and these assignments are included as a part of Project XML.

You can choose to apply these assignments or save them in a folder so that they can be used when re-slotting is done in future. The Project XML is saved along with the item XML and location XML in the following folder:

<folder name configured in the properties files>/<Node name>/<Date>

The slotting preferences and slotting results can be seen in the OptiSlot UI. If the results are not satisfactory, the preferences and constraints can be modified, regenerated, and saved once satisfactory in the OptiSlot UI. For more information about launching the OptiSlot UI, see the OptiSlot documentation.

Based on the location-item assignments, location dedications and move tasks may be generated to move the items to the assigned locations. Move tasks are generated using the Moves List provided by OptiSlot. The Moves List contains a chain of moves and a task is created for each move in the chain, with the previous move in the chain as a predecessor task. The first move task in the chain is released and the rest are held. Each successor task is initiated only when the predecessor task is completed.

Items that are unslotted are putaway to storage.