Order Fulfillment consists of various steps from the initial level of receiving the order till the time the entire process wraps with the last mile delivery. Ensuring the predesigned timeline of order delivery, it’s crucial to keep a close watch on every single step in the process. Everything starts with order receiving. Later on, a picklist is created for the picker to get the required items from a warehouse, if the picking process isn’t accurate, there can be a fair room for errors and delayed deliveries.
It’s highly imperative to understand the value of a smooth and efficient picking process at the warehouse as it can have a deep impact on the bottom line. Therefore picking optimization should be considered one of the most crucial aspects to improve the customer experience and keep a check on the picker efficiency at the same time.
Let’s decode the basics of picklist, the challenges in the row, and finally, the right ways to increase picking efficiency in the long run.
What’s a Picklist?
A picklist can be defined as an all-inclusive document sent to the warehouse pickers for order fulfillment. The list consists of the items which are required to be retrieved from the storage. Why’s it required? Exactly how you need the right planning before execution, a picklist is the part of the plan which makes the picking process organized. Picklist optimization facilitates faster and more efficient order fulfillment along with a significant reduction in SLA breaches.
To your surprise, manpower usually accounts for 70 percent of operations cost within a warehouse, and 50-60 percent of manpower cost is usually spent on order picking. Well, that’s quite a huge share of investment! Considering this, picklist optimization becomes an inevitable part of the process.
What’s the Challenge?
When the picklist is assigned to the warehouse picker, the process requires edge to edge tracking to gather picker insights and check the efficiency at the same time, however, a manual process lacks tracking which can lead to delays, errors and a messed up delivery. To optimize the picklist management, it’s advisable to have a warehouse management system recording your data, saving product images, adding in additional information required to ensure the picklist, having the right idea for quality control, and most importantly ensuring accurate picker activity from assigning the list, procuring the product, allocating it at the right place and ultimately delivering on time.
Ways to Increase Warehouse Picking Efficiency
Optimizing warehouse operations is beyond necessity and for doing it right, it’s important to have a system that not only lets you manage the stocks but provides picker staff tracking as well. As efficient picking leads to delivery accuracy and a thorough streamlined process.
Read: Essential WMS Features that let you Attain Operational Capabilities
As a business owner, if you’re in splits over declining growth rates or waning productivity, there are surely some adjustments that can help in making the picking process effective –
- Assigning Picklist to the Agent
Once a picklist is ready to be assigned, consider assigning it to the right agent. When the picker is assigned manually, there can be more errors & delays as you can never track picker efficiency accurately, but, through incorporating a warehouse management solution, picker is assigned automatically through analyzing their regular activity logs and tracking the efficiency as well. Alongside, the picklist can be assigned based on the order location or can be filtered based on the marketplace as well, for instance, you can assign picker location wise – Picker A for Delhi, Picker B for Bangalore etc. this will save time and get the deliveries done quickly and accurately. Also, if the picker is assigned based on the marketplaces such as Flipkart, Amazon etc. this again helps in quick deliveries and lesser SLA breach, and streamlined operations. This can further facilitate in knowing where the process lacks and find the reason for delivery delay loopholes, helping a business to streamline the order delivery process.
Read: Enhance the Operations of the Warehouse with Order Picking: Process and Methods
- Consider Right Placement
Larger warehouses might have tons of products stored in and the placement of the products might be the prime reason for delays. Why? If the highest selling SKUs are kept at the extreme ends of a single warehouse, it might eat up heaps of time for the picking staff. Be wise in organizing your inventory in such a way that picking could be done faster. While in most cases inventory organization is done by SKU number, it’s always better to have it organized based on the probability of being bought together. This can save your time and ultimately get deliveries quicker.
- Give a Thought to Storage Racks
This might seem an underrated idea but can actually save you a lot of time! Picking up the right racks for your warehouse is another good option to consider. It’s also good to have elevated racks that are easy for the conveyor belts but, in case manual picking is your go-to, trust the floor racks which are easier and faster to access for the pickers.
Final Thoughts
Picklist optimization is an integral part of every ecommerce business, though there’s a dire need to automate or digitize the warehouse processes to make order management , inventory management, and returns management more streamlined. Incorporating a warehouse management system (WMS) in your business can effectively help in making the supply chain run smooth and error free. A few adjustments in the way your warehouse is being operated can help in lesser errors and promote faster & more accurate deliveries.
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