Knowledge Base

Order picking is the process of locating and retrieving products from various storage locations in a warehouse to fulfill customer orders. It is a labor intensive and repetitive process and is a vital part of warehouse operation requiring speed and accuracy. Slow and incorrect fulfillment can result in customer dissatisfaction, less returning customers and harm the reputation of the company in addition to the financial and labor cost of handling returned merchandise and redelivery. To compound the challenge, picking volume can vary by season, so the picking process must be to able to scale up without significant impact to speed and accuracy readily.

There are many WMS or ERP software available in the market that can help with the picking process. For example, SAP Business One includes a Pick, Pack and Production Manager that enables a warehouse manager to keep track of the processing of sales and production orders in various stages of picking. Together with a basic support for pick list generation, SAP Business One can help you coordinate and organize the picking process. If your warehouse ships hundreds or thousands of orders a day, however, you may want to streamline the picking process by using a more effective picking strategy such as batch picking, zone picking and pick route planning.

To do that, our Batch Pick online tool can help you group the pick orders into optimal batches and calculate the shortest pick routes so that the total foot distance required for picking is significantly reduced. Besides the optimized pick lists, it also provides step by step direction on where to pick the next item and an estimate of the total foot distance. The information provided allows you to plan and allocate labor for pick tasks effectively.

The online Batch Pick tool works with SAP B1 directly so no additional software installation is required. You are welcome to create a free 30 day trial account to try it out and see what it can do to accelerate your warehouse operation.