How To Group Products Together Within a Load

 

Here are the container results after optimizing.

 

 

But suppose that you want to keep the products together by color. Here's how you can achieve that using group numbers.

 

Open a load in the Load Setup area, and enter a number in the Grp column for each product. Products of the same group number will be grouped together within the load.
 
Here is the the load above with Grp column populated with 1, 2 or 3:

 

Containers are now optimized with red, blue and green products grouped together.

 

Default setting for how groups are split over containers is "Always allowed". This can be changed in the Load Settings area under the Loading Rules tab using the "Splitting groups over containers" drop down menu. There are four choices:

"Always allowed" default setting loads groups immediately after one group finishes loading within the same container.

Always allowed will begin loading a group of products in one container and can end loading in another container. The example above illustrates the blue group started loading in the first container, and completed its load in the second.

“Okay if it avoids an extra container” setting loads each group in their own container, but will split a group if less containers can be utilized.
Select "Okay if it avoids an extra container" before clicking optimize". Optimized containers will each only carry one group unless sharing avoids using an extra container.
 
Here is the Load setup area where red, green, and blue cartons are grouped with splitting groups over containers is "Okay if it avoids an extra container".

 

The optimized result is each group having their own container.

 

 

If “Okay if it avoids an extra container” setting is selected, grouped products may not have their own container to prevent an extra container from being used.

Here is the Load Setup area again with the same grouped products, but with an additional 4th group of yellow products while using the “Okay if it avoids an extra container” setting to illustrate how grouped products are split to avoid using an extra container.

An extra fourth container for the 4th yellow group is not added, the yellow and green product groups are split within the the already loaded containers instead.

 

“Never Allowed” setting will never split grouped products, will always load grouped products together in one container.

Select the "Never Allowed" to ensure an entire group is provided it's own container regardless if there is plenty of space in an already used container.

Here is the Load setup area with the 4 groups of red, green, blue and yellow cartons using the splitting groups over container is "Never Allowed" choice.

 

 

Adding a 20' High Cube Dry Container to this load will ensure a container is large enough to store all 112 products of the yellow group. Below is the same load as above adjusted to have a 20' High Cube Dry Container included. It is followed followed by the loaded containers after re-optimizing. All products are now loaded including all the yellow products.

 

 

 

Cube-IQ loads the group of products belonging to the yellow group into the 20' High Cube container because it is the only container large enough, while the other groups of products are each loaded into a 20' standard container.

“Okay only when too large for container” setting will load groups into their own container and can split a group into two or more containers.

Select "Okay only when too large for container" setting if groups cannot share the same container and each group can split between more than one container.

Here is the Load Setup area where there are red, green, blue, and yellow groups. Only 20' standard containers are available for this load. And the yellow group continue to have 28 Qty for each of its products (112 yellow products), not all products belonging to the yellow group can fit in one container. Using the splitting groups over containers is "Okay only when too large for one container" will allow for additional container for products belonging to the yellow group.