Question

Describe three techniques that can be used to increase the productivity of a picker. What additional costs do they have over a simple paper list?

Answer 1

The choices you make have a big impact on your supply chain when it comes to warehouse order picking methods. Choosing the right order picking strategies for your business will go a long way, leading to improvements such as reduced labor costs, improved customer service, and best use of warehouse space. If you want to know how to improve the productivity of picking, you should know about some warehouse picking best practices.

The slotting of the product may degrade over time if left untouched. SKUs will change or be added and removed, and warehouse workers will change their way of operating. Much of the time, employees will put items in the most suitable position to save time during a rush, without taking into account the long-term consequences of that unorganized action. Statistics show that the average warehouse has roughly 50% of its SKUs.

Choosing batch and cluster order This feature helps workers to search a batch of cartons once while moving to each separate location. When a worker picks from one spot, instead of scanning each individual pick, they may scan the entire quantity required for all the cartons at once. Managers can make their worker's time more efficient and productive by allowing batch and cluster order picking.

Using various storage strategies can increase the efficiency of your warehouse operations. Slotting can improve the intensity of the storage, reduce accidents and damage to the product, reduce congestion and improve the time it takes to recover items. This is just one example of a change in strategy that has helped other businesses. Take this time to review your storage strategies, as the year is still new, and plan to review them in a few months. It helps you to adapt your activities to the seasonal demand.

The pick list is again sorted as identified above by the preferred path. The distribution of the item to the batch orders is displayed for each item. For each order, the picker places the items in a separate box. Problem: This is most likely to be a mistake.
The real drawback to paper pick lists is that each item is not verified as it is picked. At the end of the process, verification is done, often leading to more rework, costing you time and money. Batch picking based on scanners can eliminate these disadvantages of paper pick lists If you do not sort or check when choosing, before sending, you must do so. One person is packaging the order and a second person is searching for delivering the right products and quantity. Problem: More working hours / costs. * An affordable, scanner-based picking device will benefit greatly from reducing direct costs. Batch picking systems can make batch picking accurate and quick using a handheld computer with bar code scanning.