Pick Stage: How to Assess Your Operation's Efficiency

For this article we will be focusing on the pick stage within the fulfillment process. As with every stage we have discussed thus far, there are critical questions to ask and components to consider to make an accurate baseline assessment of your fulfillment process.

Critical Pick Questions & Elements to Consider

One of the first questions in the pick stage that you should ask is whether your business currently has a centralized inventory management? Having a centralized inventory management system allows you to manage your inventory levels through a connected database ERP, IMS, or WMS.

Next, do you have dimensional product data for all SKUs? With an ERP in use, your warehouse employees can conveniently verify the weights and dimensions for all product SKUs.

Another vital element to consider during the pick stage is whether your business is using a warehouse management system (WMS). A WMS, such as RF-SMART, allows you to manage the pick process in the warehouse by tracking inventory’s availability and location.

Important Pick KPIs to Track

In addition to considering these critical questions and elements, it’s equally important to understand the KPIs that can help you track the status of your fulfillment operation. For example, metrics specific to the pick stage can include:

Numbers of orders picked per hour
Number of orders picked in 100% accuracy

Tracking these vital KPIs can help you better understand your current pick operation and identify opportunities for improvement to scale your business.

The list of picking questions and metrics worth considering doesn’t end here. To learn more about how you can establish a greater understanding of the pick stage of your fulfillment operation and how to improve it going forward, take ShipHawk’s Fulfillment Scorecard assessment.

If you would like to learn more about important questions and metrics for other key stages of your fulfillment process, check out our Ship and Pack articles.