Sorting Out the Stragglers

There are a number of warehouse operations that don’t quite deliver what was expected.  One of the main reasons can often be traced to the way customer orders are released to the picking operation.

This is particularly vital in higher throughput, multiple order picking environments such as grocery retail and home shopping, where the order to pick items is decided when the bulk of the orders have been received.  Operations need to optimise for a number of different, often competing factors; picking time for loading, balance workload, avoid congestion and replenish pick faces.

There can be difficulties in finishing picking on time, especially in automated operations.  This is usually because operations are designed without account for the slow start, peak near the middle and long ‘tail’ of stragglers.  Even on a peak day, the peak hour will be around 30% more than average.

The answer?  A system must continually re-plan activities throughout the day, staff can be moved with the WMS managing workload balancing.  Pick face profiling should be carried out regularly.

You can’t just light the blue touch paper and stand well back.