How to group products together in a load

How to group products together in a load

Cube-IQ can group products together.

Group is used to keep products together within a load, otherwise Cube-IQ will load the products where it fits best. Here is a load that is not grouped. The column where products are assigned a group number is left blank. This is followed by its optimized load of 3 containers.



Here are the container results after optimizing.



Instead of loading products as is above, products can be grouped to keep red, blue and green products together.

Use group numbers to group products together.

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: 1) are blue colored, 2) are green colored, and 3) are red colored products.



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

Use "Splitting groups over containers" to control how groups are loaded.

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 choice: 1) Always allowed, 2) Okay if it avoids another container, 3) Okay only when to large for one Container, and 4) Never allowed



The three containers above are loaded using the always allowed default choice.

"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 sames 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.




Unlike the "Okay if it avoids an extra container", the "Never Allow" setting will not split products between containers. Another container is used for the yellow group even though there is enough space for products, albeit split, to be grouped together in three containers.

 If “Never Allowed” Setting is selected, products to load may not get loaded into a container if no container is large enough to load the entire product group.

Here is the Load Settings area again where the 4th group of yellow products are increased from 4 to 28 Qty each (112 total yellow products). In this scenario, the Not Loaded columns confirms how all yellow products have 28 not loaded items each after re-optimizing . This happens because a 20' Standard Dry Containers cannot load all 112 yellow products.



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.





All groups including the yellow group are loaded into their own containers to prevent splitting/sharing between groups and additional containers are used per group if necessary.

Notes:

Cube-IQ's Use 'sequence' with groups feature to sequence after grouping.

If you need to sequence products belonging to a group within a group's container, you can use Cube-IQ's Use 'sequence' with groups feature. Click this link to learn more about the "Use Sequence with Groups" feature

Cube-IQ can load products in the order of their group number.

Enable the "Use Group number as primary sequence" feature to load groups in the order of their group number. Click this link to learn more about the "Use Group number as primary sequence" feature


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