Continuously, organizations assess order assortment and selection operations by considering the implementation of new techniques, novel processes, and new equipment, which not necessarily needs to represent, as believed by many, significant investments or a complete deviation from current methods of operation employed by the company.
In fact, productivity in picking operations may be increased simply by following these simple tips:
1.- Rearrange SKUs
- Classify items by speed, size, and number of items stored.
- Verify that fas-moving SKUs are placed at more accessible locations than those of slower movement.
- Rearrange 8-10% of the SKUs per month; this will be much easier than rearranging them all at once, since doing so may prove overwhelming and extremely time-consuming.
2.- Make use of the Golden Area
- Place SKUs within the worker’s Golden Area, which is the “comfortable” area to select, aeerot, and record orders. This encompasses the area between the worker’s knees and shoulders.
- Prevent workers from having to courth or try reach for objects above their heads, since doing so may drastically impact productivity during order assortment, while it may also cause possible injuries that result in compensations or derived costs.
- In the case of heavy SKUs or SKUs that require specific manipulation, make sure to have the proper tools to handle them.
3.- Adapt SKUs to your storage technology
- Adapting the SKU profile to the storage device is a critical step ignored by many companies.
- Evoid randomly storing SKUs using any available technology at the time.
- It is important that the picking technology perfectly matches the SKU profile. This will allow the worker to find, access, and recover the SKU much more efficiently.
- Promote an automatic picking environment as much as possible. In a manual picking environment, only 10% of the workers’ time is invested in picking: the most productive action. In turn, with automatic picking, the time investment in this activity increases in up to 76%.
4.- Implement a picking strategy
- Batch picking: record, select, and assort more than one order at the same time greatly increases productivity.
- Zone picking: dividing the warehouse in multiple areas and assigning workers to assort orders in a specific area.
- Pick & pass: moving orders from one area to another for completion; even before preparing them for shipping.
- Consolidation: can be implemented instead of pick & pass. Whenever a consolidation strategy is implemented along with zone picking, each area simultaneously collects the required SKUs for a particular order.
5.- Keep it simple, double check, and ask yourself “why”
- Double check your picking and replentishment processes, and ask yourself why are processes carried out in a specific manner. You may find that some steps hindering the process, having being implemented a long time ago and now proving ineffective.
- Keep in mind that, although changes may seem simple, small gains in productivity do count.
All in all, no superhuman efforts nor handsome investments are required to achieve significant investments in productivity on picking operations. Begin by gradually implementing these 5 recommendations, and you will undoubtedly notice an increase in productivity and proft.
If you are considering optimizing your picking system or implementing improvements to the system, and need advice on how to do so, don’t hessitate to contact us so that we may help by providing you with the most precise and converging solution, in line with your needs. We provide logistics solutions both in Pick to Light (PTL), and Pick to Voice (PTV).
If you are considering further looking into each of these recommendations, please download the e-guide provided below:
