Best Practices: Warehouse Picking
Using the “best practices” in the industry can result in faster deliveries, fewer mistakes and happier customers. Do you use the best practices?
Standardized Containers: Use standardized containers to store materials. This will simplify warehouse order fulfillment, make it easier to find and store materials, and give the warehouse a neater appearance that improves the over-all process.
Using standardized bins will also limit the variety of material handling equipment you need. This saves time that pickers would waste searching for the right equipment, and it saves investment in different sizes and styles of equipment.
Bin Locations: use bin locations to ensure that bins and pallets are placed carefully on shelves in the assigned location. This can minimize lost or misplaced inventory and reduces time spent looking for materials. When bins are clearly marked and located, training time is also reduced.
Large, Clear Labels: Use clear, legible labels that can be read by people as well as scanners or other equipment to further reduce errors.
Cross Docking: Implement cross docking to speed up operations and eliminate excessive inventory handling by delivering goods needed for orders to the shipping dock without making a stop in the warehouse. This reduces the order cycle time and material handling costs.
Order the Warehouse by Popularity: Review your sales data and move the most popular items closest to the shipping dock. Picking, packing and shipping time will be reduced – resulting in lower shipping charges and happy customers.