Function · Replenishment Built

Faces full before the rush.

Replenishment keeps forward pick faces stocked from reserve. openWCS works min/max with the right urgency, tops faces off opportunistically in off-peak windows, and skips reserve entirely with direct-to-pick when inbound can go straight to the face.

How it works

Three modes, one goal: no empty face at peak.

Fixed pick faces carry a SKU+UoM with a minimum and a maximum. openWCS watches the level and chooses how — and how urgently — to refill.

Min/max

Refill on threshold

Drop below min and a refill is raised — emergency if the face is empty and blocking picks, scheduled otherwise so routine refills don't jump the queue.

Off-peak top-off

Opportunistic to max

In quiet windows every face is topped up to max, so disruptive hot replenishments during peak are avoided and the floor starts each rush full.

Direct-to-pick

Cross-dock when it fits

If a forward face has headroom below its max, inbound is routed straight there — skipping a reserve put-away and a later replenishment trip entirely.

Urgency

Emergency vs scheduled

Refills carry a priority so an empty, picking-blocked face is served ahead of a face that is merely below min — work is sequenced by what actually hurts throughput.

Source

Pull from reserve

Replenishment draws from reserve and automated blocks, reusing the same movement layer as put-away — one mover network, not a separate pipeline.

Configurable

Your thresholds

Min, max and the off-peak window are configuration per face, so you set the trade-off between carrying buffer and trip count yourself.

Step by step

How a face stays full.

Watch the level. Each fixed pick face carries a SKU+UoM with a min and a max; openWCS tracks its current quantity against both.
Catch inbound first. When stock arrives, check whether the forward face has headroom — if so, route it direct-to-pick and skip a reserve put-away entirely.
Trigger on threshold. When a face drops below min, raise a refill — marked EMERGENCY if the face is empty and blocking picks, SCHEDULED otherwise.
Pull from reserve. The refill draws from reserve and automated blocks over the same movement layer as put-away — one mover network, sequenced by urgency.
Top off off-peak. In quiet windows, fill every face up to max so each rush starts full and hot replenishments during peak are avoided.

At a glance

Level drops → refill, or never empties.

  inbound (SKU, HU) ─►  forward face has headroom?  ── yes ─►  direct-to-pick (cross-dock)
                                       │ no
                                       ▼
                                  reserve put-away
  face below min ─►  replenishment  ── empty? ─► EMERGENCY
                                          └─ else ──► SCHEDULED
  off-peak window ─►  top every face up to max

Configurable & open

Keep the faces full, your way.

Replenishment shares the slotting engine's location model and the conveyor/ASRS movers. Read the slotting deep dive for how those faces are chosen in the first place.

Slotting deep dive Read the docs