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266 CHAPTER 7 Inventory and Warehouse Management Processes

will begin with an alphabetic character (A) followed by two numbers (NN).
The seven remaining characters are common to all bins (C). Thus, a possible
bin number is A12XXXXXXX, where “X” represents the common character.
The structure indicates how the noncommon digits will increase or
increment. Essentially, digits with the same letter in the structure are incre-
mented together, and digits represented by different numbers are incremented
independently of one another. Thus, in the fi rst example in Figure 7-44, each of
the fi rst three digits is incremented individually because each digit (column)
has a different letter in the structure row (A, B, and C). Therefore, an incre-
ment in B will not automatically result in an increment in C. In contrast, in the
second example the second and third digits are incremented together because
they have the same character (B) in the structure row. Thus, if the second digit
is incremented by 1, then the third digit also is incremented by 1.
The start value and end value indicate the starting and ending val-
ues of the noncommon digits in the bin numbers. In all three examples in
Figure 7-44 the start values are A11 and the end values are B22.
Finally, the increment indicates how much each noncommon digit is to
be increased by. In the fi rst and second examples each digit is incremented by
1 unit (1 letter or 1 number). Thus, A is incremented to B, 1 is incremented to 2,
and so on. In contrast, in the third example the second digit does not increase
because the increment for that digit (column) is set to zero.
Let’s turn to the fi rst example. Bin numbers are determined from right
to left. The fi rst bin is A11, and each of the three noncommon digits (columns)
is incremented separately. The rightmost digit will increment by 1—the incre-
ment identifi ed in row 5—so the next bin will be A12. At this point, the rightmost
digit has reached its ending value (row 4), so the digit immediately to the left
will begin incrementing. Following the same rules, the next bins are A21 and
A22. Finally, the fi rst digit increments to “B,” thus creating bins B11, B12, B21,
and B22, for a total of 8 bins.
In the second example, the second and third digits are incremented
together because they have the same value (B) in the structure. Consequently,
bin values for these two digits will be 11 and 22. Combining these values with
the value of fi rst digit (A and B) will result in bins A11, A22, B11, and B22.
In the third example, the second and third digits increment together, but
the increment value for the second digit is 0. Therefore the second digit will
never increment. As a result, these two digits (second and third) will have 12
values ranging from 11 through 22. When these values are combined with the
two values for the fi rst digit (A and B), a total of 24 bins are created.
Figure 7-45 illustrates the bin creation data for GBI. GBI uses these two
models to create bins in the shelf storage area and the pallet storage area,
respectively. All bins begin with the common characters STBN- and end with
the common characters 000. Thus, the sixth digit (column) is the only one that
increments. For the shelf storage area the starting value is 1, the ending value
is 3, and the increment value is 1. Similarly, for the pallet storage area, the start
value is 7, the end value is 9, and the increment is 1. Consequently, three bins
are created in each area.

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