Walk less, work faster
Your team loses a lot of time walking, searching and returning to the same racks.
Put your bestsellers in the best spots, place the packing table at the end of your aisles and use batches for small orders. Speed comes naturally.
What helps
- Divide your warehouse into A, B and C products and put your bestsellers in the easiest spots to reach.
- Place packing tables in a logical spot, so the distance from shelf to packing table stays short.
- Pick per order when your warehouse is small; switch to batches once you process many small orders in a larger warehouse.
- Use quiet moments to replenish pick stock and prepare for recurring peaks.
Warehouse employees spend up to 60% of their workday walking. Most lost time isn't in working slowly, but in unnecessary steps. Make the route smarter and speed comes naturally.
Divide your warehouse into ABC products
A-products are the top 5% by sales volume. B-products are the next 15%. The remaining 80% are C-products. Put A-products close to the packing table and on easy-to-reach locations. That saves a lot of steps every day.
Spread your bestsellers across several aisles too if multiple people pick at the same time. If all your most popular products sit in one aisle, you create traffic jams.
Don't constantly move products as their popularity changes. It's smarter to place fresh stock from a new purchase in a better spot and let the existing stock sell out. That way your layout improves on its own.
Put the packing table at the end of the aisles
Place your packing table at the head of the racks: at the end where the aisles come together. Not somewhere in the middle of the route. From there you keep the lines to your locations short and clear. A-products sit closest to the packing table, then B-products, with C-products at the back.
Per order or in batches
Picking per order is the simplest choice. It's not very error-prone and easy to explain to new employees. It works well if you have large products or if your warehouse is small.
Batch picking gets interesting once you have many small orders and your warehouse is large enough that you gain real walking savings. You then collect products for several orders in a single round.
A singles batch is for orders with one item, or several units of the same item. You collect those products in one round and don't have to keep them apart per order along the way. At the packing table you scan a product and software helps you find the matching order. For online stores with many small orders, this quickly covers 30 to 80% of daily volume.
Prepare for busy moments
Use quiet periods to replenish pick stock, fold boxes and set out bestsellers. That helps most on your busiest day of the week.
Common mistakes
Pushing for speed too early. If mistakes aren't under control yet, working faster mostly makes your process more chaotic. Make sure orders leave the door correctly first.
Using batches without keeping orders apart. Batch picking only works if you know during picking which product belongs to which order, for example with separate bins on a cart. Otherwise you just move the problem from walking to making mistakes.
