3 tips for optimizing order picking
Order picking is a profession in its own right. It's thanks to our order pickers that customers receive their parcels, with the right products, well-packaged. In busy periods, teams have to double their efforts to meet customer demand. Discover our tips for an optimal preparation process.
First of all, what does order processing involve?
Processing a customer order goes through several stages. The company uses software to communicate customer baskets to the warehouses. Operators are responsible for picking, scanning and packing the products. Orders are then dispatched to the right addresses.
Tip 1: Better inventory management to improve order picking
The first important step is to know your storage capacity and to anticipate demand so as to better organize your supplier orders. Determining quantities in advance is essential.
Keep in mind which e-commerce periods generate the most orders, so you can organize your inventory and human resources. For this, it's important to communicate with the store if you also have a physical store.
Determining the most popular products of the moment in order to find the right place for all product references will save time when preparing orders.
As you can see, you'll need to plan warehouse tidying often enough to ensure that it always meets the needs of different periods. Discover our tips for warehouse management.
Tip 2: Organize your warehouse to facilitate picking
Now we need to organize the route that operators will take throughout the warehouse. Here, it's important to think about all the stages in the supply chain.
You can dedicate an area for single-order picking, another for order picking, an area for checking and a final one for shipping. Don't hesitate to use floor markings to guide your employees. Signage will make the route more intuitive.
Group orders by supplier, product type or urgency level to save time during order picking.
This step will help you avoid mistakes that can make a customer unhappy, such as reversing products when preparing multi-orders.
There are various training courses on the market to teach your teams how to better organize their workspace.
Tip 3: Think about the best logistics for managing customer order picking and saving order pickers time.
It's a question of thinking about the supply chain. What technology do you use for picking? The choice is important to improve efficiency and productivity. A Pick light will enable your pickers to limit item errors. This scan will indicate whether the item is the right one or not. It's not the only picking method, but it's the most common. There is also the Pick voice solution.
You'll need to decide in advance how the order picker will be organized:
- Alone, managing orders one after the other (picking by item or by reference);
- Several orders at once (group picking) ;
- It moves to the product;
- The products come to him.
When it comes to tools, it all depends on how many orders you have to process. The pick-to-voice system is more useful in larger warehouses and when stock levels are higher. It enables order pickers to move more quickly through each stage of the handling process. As for put-to-light, it's most useful when several orders need to be grouped together in one cart.
Finally, you'll need to ship the goods as quickly as possible. To do this, make sure you have all the necessary supplies (packing cartons, tape, cutters, etc.).
These tips will keep your teams up and running, and your end customers happy!
