Stock request and picking procedure requires a means of communication between the selling area which will request the stock and the stock room which will pick and transfer the stock to the selling area. In a manual system, this is traditionally accomplished by using microphones and loud speakers for two-way communication between the two location. The company is literally at the mercy of the stock picker. Before a stock request can be made. The requester must first call out the stock picker and wait for a reply to make sure the stock request does not fall on deaf ears. Once the picker replies, the requester can then communicate the stock number of the item needed. The picker must know where this stock is stored to be able to go pick it. This is acceptable in a small stock room situation, but for a big stock room with thousands of items, often times, the picker would not be able to instantly locate the item needed. and would just reply to the requester that the item is out of stock. One huge disadvantage of the manual system is that management will not be able to track how many items not found were really out of stock. The stock room clerk could keep inventory on stock cards, sorted by stock numbers to aid in inventory location and quantity. But again, this is tedious even for a small stock room operation.

Under STARSol, these microphones and speakers can be put offline. A series of terminals and slip printers replaces the microphones in the selling area and the stock room. Stock requests in the selling area are entered into system by the sales clerk using the Stock Request program. This stock request program literally shoots the request to the Stock Picking program in the stock room. The stock picking program displays all the requests for its location. An optional slip printer can be setup to print all requests automatically or when the pick operator selects an item to pick. The pick program is able to tell the picker which bin location to pick the item from. This eliminates the need for the picker to mentally know where each item is stored. An added side benefit of computerizing this procedure is that the management will now be able to track a lot of the things happening in the Request and Picking process. The system is now able to track the time it took a request to be picked, transferred and received and the persons involved in the process.

The system can report an exception when a picker says thereีs no stock but the inventory level on the computer says otherwise.

Request and Pick Monitor programs allows operation managers to monitor all stock requests or picking online, as it happens.