The efficiency of your warehouse operations are often the difference between thriving and merely surviving in the competitive world of modern business. Pick optimization, the process of streamlining order picking to enhance productivity and accuracy, is a game changer. This essential component of supply chain management can significantly impact your bottom line, customer satisfaction, and overall operational success. Understanding the crucial aspects of the pick optimization process and strategies is necessary to ensure your business can excel.
What is Pick Optimization and Why Does it Matter?
Pick optimization is the process of strategically grouping items and applying various strategies to maximize accuracy and minimize the travel taken to pick items for a series of orders. When evaluating a future system for picking functionality, it’s important to ask specific questions based on your needs such as:
- Does the system minimize travel time in the warehouse by optimizing pick path based on location?
- Does the system continuously improve wave management until orders are released?
- Can the system scale with increases in order demand—for example, the ability to pick from dynamic primary bins, or moving replenishment inventory to a closer location based on demand?
With the right pick optimization, you can:
- Maximize throughput
- Improve accuracy
- Exceed company SLAs
- Maximize asset utilization and reduce supply chain footprint
- Delight customers
- Lower shipping costs
- Reduce human error
- Improve employee retention
The ShipHawk Warehouse Management System (WMS) features a pick wave optimization system that uses attributes to assign groups of orders to various pick strategies, assuring the highest throughput while maintaining perfect accuracy and order integrity throughout the process.
Selecting the Right Picking Strategy
Your business operations will vary based on warehouse set up, availability of operators, inventory status and many other factors. To make these operations run as efficiently as possible, your warehouse should combine a variety of picking strategies to best serve your needs. The ShipHawk WMS system uses a combination of eight different pick strategies.
Batch Picking
When there are large sets of identical orders, batch picking can be a useful technique to collect all inventory required for a batch in one pick tour and deliver the inventory to packing for splitting and shipping. The warehouse operator will travel through the warehouse and pick a set of orders that all have the exact same characteristics.
Cluster Picking
Think about how someone working for a grocery delivery service would select multiple orders, picking all items for all orders simultaneously as they traverse the store. In this event, when there are many multi-line/multi-unit orders, the warehouse operator will be directed to set up multiple tote/cartons on a cart and travel through the warehouse to pick a corresponding set of orders, one order per tote/container. At the end of the pick tour, the operator will discharge the cart to packing, where they will pack out each order from each tote.
Super Batch Picking
In the case of small sets of identical orders, the WMS will direct the operator to compose a cart with multiple totes, each tote designated for a small batch of orders. The operator will pick the items in pick sequence, and place the items in the totes directed. The result will be a discrete set of small batches (one batch in each tote) that the packing operator can then process with great efficiency. This is a highly productive way to easily pick dozens of orders at once while maintaining batch integrity throughout the entire pick process.
Wave Picking
Wave picking involves the operator picking all items for an entire wave of orders and then sorting those orders with a separate system at packing. With this profile, dozens, even hundreds of items can be picked in a single pick tour and delivered to packing, where the pack operator simply needs to scan each item and get a pack list and shipping label, all in one highly efficient step.
Consolidation Picking
If multiple orders exist in the system at once for a single customer or ship-to address, the WMS can automatically consolidate these orders to make it appear as if they're a single order. Any pick method described here can be used to fulfill that set of consolidated orders.
Order Picking
Order picking is the most simple, but sometimes the best approach to pick large freight orders. The warehouse operator simply travels through the warehouse to pick a single order at a time.
Zone Picking
Zone picking is applicable when your warehouse is divided into zones, in which each operator controls and picks only from that zone they are assigned, and then either passes their picks to the next zone (pick-and-pass), or directs their picks to a merge area for consolidation (pick-and-merge). The orders are then combined after to create complete picks and directed to packing.
Automated Picking
Advanced WMS systems can support real time integration to Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS), Carousel Systems, Vertical Lift Modules (VLM), and other robotic picking subsystems used in your operations to truly supercharge your operation and throughput.
Get in Contact with ShipHawk
A well-functioning pick optimization process is essential to improving accuracy, reducing human error and saving on shipping costs for your business. While ShipHawk provides extensive options for pick strategies, we know not all will be effective for your business. That’s why the ShipHawk WMS will analyze your operations and recommend which techniques will work best for you, also allowing you to customize your business processes to set up for future shipments. Schedule time today to speak to a ShipHawk expert today and learn more about how the ShipHawk WMS can help you automate your warehousing and fulfillment processes!