Collection of orders in a warehouse - Order Picking

What is picking in a warehouse?
Warehouse picking refers to the method where individual items are picked from a fulfillment facility to satisfy customers’ orders. It’s an essential aspect of order fulfillment and is considered one of the most expensive and labor-intensive activities for warehouses. Since warehouse picking directly impacts customer satisfaction, business reputation and profitability, improving this activity may be a top priority for companies worldwide.

Zone picking
Also mentioned because the “pick and pass” methodology, this picking strategy is usually used for complex or multi-item orders to enhance efficiency. Similar SKUs are organized into specific and physically defined groups called “zones” and pickers are assigned to individual zones. To fulfill customers’ orders, the picker(s) assigned to a zone are liable for picking all the SKUs from that zone.

Collection of orders during a warehouse - Order Picking

Of all the above-mentioned warehouse processes, collecting orders is the most important and most challenging for optimization. Collecting orders or order picking is defined as picking from storage locations based on customer requirements. collecting orders in the warehouse waste the largest share of time of all warehouse activities, approximately 70%. Therefore, it's vital to attenuate the pickers’ collection time and picking route. Affecting the mentioned total collection time by order decreases, and therefore the number of successfully collected orders per hour increases. When collecting orders, it also appears that the most important share of labor is completed by warehouse workers. In order to satisfy large orders of the many customers, the warehouses have several shifts performing tasks of collecting orders. From an economic point of view, collecting orders makes up to 55% of operating costs in the warehouse. Therefore, it is important to reduce the order picking cost by optimizing the time and picking route because it greatly reduces the overall storage costs. Annual operating costs in warehouses are shown in Figure 2