When it has to be efficient: Exploit the potential in the warehouse with an intelligent picking strategy.

Orders upon orders? Picking items without end? How do I get the whole thing processed efficiently? These are the questions that drive many people. One thing is certain: Picking is an important core process in the warehouse of every company, which should not be neglected at all. The picking process often accounts for a good 50% of the total effort within a distribution center. The share of pure travel time is considerable and ties up enormous capacities - this inevitably affects the efficiency of the logistics processes in the warehouse. The solution? Streamlining the process by minimizing walking distances. So the motto is: there is no way around an intelligent picking strategy.

Imagine the following simplified scenario. You have two orders with the same items, for example one light bulb. For the first order you need 5 light bulbs and for the second order 100. How efficient would you find it if the 100 were compiled from several sources as well as by different employees and the areas or levels in the warehouse were also changed - but it would be possible at another storage location to pick the necessary items for both orders from a single box with around 150 available light bulbs?

At one of our customers, we were able to implement an efficient strategy with the help of our warehouse management software, with the aim of significantly increasing performance in order picking. The focus of the optimization was on reducing walking distances. With four levels or 11 picking segments, the multi-level shelf system offers sufficient storage space for the wide range of articles with many different products. It is not uncommon for products to be stored in several places in the shelf storage system. The new inventory reservation system makes it possible to create strategically sensible location-based combinations between the many options for reserving individual order items. In this way, it is precisely specified at which level or in which segment to pick. Strategically related to the order to be reserved, the shortest possible distances of the storage bins to be approached are thus determined and the travel times for an order are kept as short as possible. In short: Reserve as close to each other as possible for the most "dense" picking of the order.

An essential basis for this optimized stock reservation are, above all, the process questions such as: "Is it possible to reserve all items of the order to be reserved in a single segment (horizontal check)?" and "Is it possible to reserve all items of the order to be reserved in a single level (vertical check)?" The checks are carried out in several stages on the basis of parameterized criteria and are mapped as a set of rules in the Warehouse Management System.

The optimized stock reservation and the exact classification of the reservation results are furthermore used to compile meaningful pick orders within a round trip on a transport unit on the basis of an order pool. In practice, it looks like related orders are planned together in a batch, but with the restriction that the planned batch is not larger than a transport unit. But what is meant by related at this point? The degree of relatedness here simply refers to the local reservation results in the picking segments. The planning of the individual batches is also carried out in multi-stage checking sequences analogous to inventory reservation. The goal is to be on the move in only a small part of the warehouse for a round trip, if possible. The entire batch planning also takes into account the filling restrictions of transport units, the capacity at the subsequent process (e.g. packing) and also the order situation. The switches of the strategies can be parameterized.

Thanks to an intelligent picking strategy, incoming orders in the warehouse can be processed promptly with shorter travel times and less effort. This not only increases the efficiency of order picking, but also reduces the physical workload of employees. All in all, processes in the warehouse become more efficient.

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Intelligent picking strategy sounds good and do you need it? Feel free to contact us.