ORDER PICKING OPTIMIZATION

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World-Class Warehousing and Material Handling

Batch Picking Batch picking can be thought of as going to a grocery store with your shopping list and those of some of your neighbors. In one traversal of the grocery store, you will have completed several orders. As a result, the travel time per line item picked will be reduced by approximately the number of orders per batch. For example, if an order picker picks one order with two items while travelling 100 feet, the distance traveled per pick is 50 feet. If the picker picked two orders with four items, the distance traveled per pick is reduced to 25 feet. Single-line orders are a natural group of orders to pick together. Single line orders can be batched by small zones in the warehouse to further reduce travel time. The major disadvantages of batch picking are the time required to sort line items into customer orders and the potential for picking errors (Figure 8.6). Zone Picking The major decision in zone picking is how to establish order integrity for orders with lines picked in multiple zones. The two options are progressive order assembly and downstream sorting.

Figure 8.6 Picking two orders, one per pallet, with a double-pallet jack is a classic example of free-form batch picking (Oxxo, Monterrey, Mexico)

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