Sage 100

Customer is considering implementing wave picking. If they create a wave of orders to pick, what is the best way to physically arrange/pack/sort the items by order number so they can be shipped to the customer? For example, if 10 orders are grouped for picking, there may be common items on each each order. The common items will be grouped together for efficient picking so the picker only visits each bin once. If they pick the items and put them in the staging area to be packed for shipping, what is the best method to unravel the mass of boxes and pallets that were picked so that each order is separated and shipped to the correct destination?

We have a customer that has a tub for each order. They place the pick ticket in each tub and sort as they pick. They get back to packing and place the tubs on the roller. They process 300 -350 orders per day in the small parcel side and it seems to work pretty well.

Thanks Scott. I can see using something similar. This company processes 40 orders, and 1500 line items a day. The orders can be a couple of lines or 500 lines. The items can be one small item that can fit in a bin or 40 pallets of an item. I can see designating areas for each sales order and dropping off the items in each area. this is a 170K SF warehouse, so running back to the staging area to unload items has to be minimal.

Cisco-Eagle has sent me newsletters for years. The information on new equipment, methods, and innovations are great. This article may give you some ideas: (updated) https://www.cisco-eagle.com/blog/2015/03/31/10-ways-to-improve-order-picking-productivity/

Thanks @MoiraGoggin ! Terrific information.

They have about 120K sf. They separate LTL and Small Parcel orders and pick them through a different process. The LTL is typically not picked in a wave as they cannot carry multiple LTL orders on their picking equipment.

@ScottHickman How do they assign orders to pickers? Who makes the call if the order should be LTL or small parcel? My customer is using DSD Multibin / ScanForce. The order is automatically allocated from the bins when the order is printed. Currently, one order is picked at a time. The owner knows the average number of lines picked each day, and he thinks the picking is inefficient compared to where they were a few years ago when the volume was less. Some of the decrease in lines picked per day can be attributed to a larger warehouse they moved into last summer. They are considering wave picking (allocating several orders at the same time so items common to multiple orders can get picked on one trip to the bin location), and splitting the allocating among several pickers. The biggest hangup is trying to determine an efficient method to re-sort the items picked by order. The information Moira sent is excellent. When using wave picking, there are two common methods used: 1. automated sorting. I imagine this uses conveyors with software designed to scan the item in the shipping staging area to determine the sales order it should be shipped with. 2. Manual sorting into groups of sales orders as the items are picked. This seems inefficient particular if there are large items that need to be picked then taken to the staging area before the picker is completed the wave. the picker would be making multiple trips to the staging area which defeats the purpose of wave picking.

One of my customers uses shopping carts and stages them just outside where they get packed. It's still not a perfect solution. Everyone complains about their warehouse.