When it comes to material handling and order fulfillment, one of the things that you need to consider is your company's order picking procedure. When you can reduce errors and improve efficiency, you'll be able to reduce your costs and increase your customer satisfaction. Here are a few tips to help you deal with potential issues within your order picking system:
Keep Your Product Slotting Up To Date
One of the things that can hinder your order picking is errors within your product slotting. If things aren't where they are supposed to be or are mislabeled in your slot system, that's going to lead to potential errors when your warehouse crew goes to fulfill orders. It can also lead to overlooking products that you have in stock when they aren't put into the right place. Make sure that everything is labelled by SKU or product number so that they are easy to access no matter how you organize your shelves.
Implement Intelligent Order Picking
When you can implement an automated system that will update your order picking system as things are pulled from the shelves, it helps to ensure that everything is pulled accurately. These systems will log everything as it moves, making it easier for you to track not only what was pulled from the warehouse, but who pulled it, and what order they pulled it for.
Implement Work Stages
Consider setting up pickers for certain SKU ranges. That way, they can pull items per order and then have them combined into the shipment at the loading dock. This reduces the errors in the picking process because those workers know the SKUs they work with and can easily identify the necessary parts. There's less confusion, which leads to greater efficiency.
Optimize The Picking Routes
When you have workers travelling the route of your warehouse to pick parts for orders, one of the best things that you can do is to optimize the order picking route. When you do that, you can reduce the amount of time spent pulling product and travelling routes. This can save you both time and money because it optimizes your workforce and increases the number of orders that can be pulled per hour.
Now that you understand a few tips for maximizing your order picking process, you might consider investing in order picker training to give you other tools that you can use. The more efficient your picking process, the better your investment and cost per order.
Contact a company like Australia Wide Forklift Training Centre for more information and assistance.
