Seven Ways to Pick Orders
Here are the seven ways to pick orders:
Single Line Orders
Zone Pick
Batch Pick and Sort
Pick and Pass
Zone Pick and Combine
Cart/Bin
One Order at a Time
Let us take a closer look at each one of them:
Single Line Orders
For many ecommerce businesses there are more than 50% of the orders that are single line orders. It becomes the fastest and cheapest to pick. You can batch all single line orders together for an SKU in order to make one pass through the pick line. It not only maximizes the pick density but also reduces walk time. Single line orders can then be taken to a designated pack station or inducted to the packing area as multiple orders of the same SKU that increase the productivity of the packing function.
When you receive order profiles, and if many of the single line orders are back ordered SKUs, cross dock them directly to the pack stations with printed orders. You can also eliminate the put away and picking.
One Order at a Time
When you handle one order at a time it works for companies with few orders that comprise many SKUs on each order. It is also inefficient for most ecommerce operations as the travel time required to pick one order at a time is excessive. You can find this in retail, business to business or wholesale distribution centers since the orders are large for major customer order shipping.
Cart/Bin
It is used to pick and sort more than one order at a time, in one pass through the pick line. A batch pick sheet is generated that shows the SKU, quantity and location on the pick cart for the picked SKU. When the location for the SKU to be selected is reached, the total quantity of the SKU is picked and placed in the appropriate location of the cart. When the last SKU has been selected, all of the orders on the cart are complete and are ready for packing.
To implement the method, you need a pick cart so that you can compartmentalize the individual orders. You will need a pick cart to accommodate anywhere from 10 to 12 orders at a time with a capacity to carry large orders. There are smaller size SKUs that can have many more orders per cart. One variation of cart picking is to pick directly into the shipping carton. An order can be filled and packed with only one touch thus reducing the cost.
Batch Pick and Sort
One concept that recognizes the desire to reduce the walk time is the batch pick and sort option. In this method, the orders are grouped together for picking an SKU order. Unlike the cart picking, the orders are not sorted during picking. These speeds up the process and permits more orders to be picked at once. The picked SKUs are taken to pack tables and are sorted by the customer order.
Time is saved during the picking process, but added time is required to sort the orders into their individual scores. This application is beneficial for larger operations where the sorting process is automated to various extents to reduce the labor. The options range from manually scanning barcodes on products to automatic unit sorters. You can utilize barcode scanning to sort SKUs to individual orders.
Zone Pick
Breaking a large warehouse into smaller zones can make picking more efficient. You must designate items to be stored in different time zones. Assign each order picker a specific zone in a warehouse.
An advantage to zone picking is that if the items are large or dimensional, they can not be recombined with other items. Just store the item by zone or even as an item in a ship alone warehouse.
Zone Pick and Combine
One variation of the batch pick and sort method is to combine the concept of zone picking where two and more pickers work on the same orders at the same time. They take their selected SKUs to the same sorting area. These independently picked order parts are then combined to complete the order.
Pick and Pass
Another concept for picking is to employ a pick and pass concept where the picker remains in a small area and the order moves from zone to zone with additional SKUs picked and added as needed to complete the order. This concept works best with a limited number of orders having a few lines per order.
One of the major disadvantages is to balance the picking requirements and productivity between assigned zones. Usually, a conveyor is used to transport a tote box from zone to zone with another conveyor that transports completed orders to the packing function.
These are some of the best order picking methods for ecommerce. In order to become more efficient and accurate in picking customer orders you can decrease the cost per order, improve customer service and also reduce the order fulfillment time.
