It’s highly imperative to understand the value of a smooth and efficient picking process at the warehouse as it can have a deep impact on the bottom line. Therefore picking optimization should be considered one of the most crucial aspects to improve the customer experience and keep a check on the picker efficiency at the same time. 

Let’s decode the basics of the pick list, the challenges in the row, and finally, the right ways to increase picking efficiency in the long run.

What’s a Pick List? 

A pick lists can be defined as an all-inclusive document sent to the warehouse pickers for order fulfillment. The list consists of the items that are required to be retrieved from storage. Why is it required? Exactly how you need the right planning before execution, a pick list is the part of the plan which makes the picking process organized. Pick list optimization facilitates faster and more efficient order fulfillment along with a significant reduction in SLA breaches. 

Importance of Pick List

Pick list are crucial in e-commerce warehouse management, streamlining the order fulfillment process and enhancing overall efficiency. Here are five key points highlighting their importance:

• Order Accuracy and Fulfillment Efficiency: Pick list ensure the right products are selected and packed for each order.
• Optimized Warehouse Operations: Pick list help organize and optimize the picking process within the warehouse. This efficiency translates to higher productivity and cost savings.
• Batch Picking and Grouping: It helps expedite the picking process by enabling workers to pick multiple orders simultaneously, increasing productivity and reducing fulfillment times.
• Inventory Management and Stock Replenishment: Pick list are essential for real-time inventory tracking, providing valuable insights into stock levels, enabling timely restocking, and preventing stockouts or overstocks, ultimately improving supply chain efficiency.
• Data Analysis and Performance Tracking: Utilizing pick list allows data collection to identify bottlenecks, improve picking strategies, and enhance overall warehouse performance. It provides valuable insights for continuous process optimization and decision-making.

What are the Challenges of Pick List?

When the pick list is assigned to the warehouse picker, the process requires edge to edge tracking to gather picker insights and check the efficiency at the same time, however, a manual process lacks tracking which can lead to delays, errors and a messed up delivery. To optimize the pick list management, it’s advisable to have a warehouse management system recording your data, saving product images, adding in additional information required to ensure the pick list, having the right idea for quality control, and most importantly ensuring accurate picker activity from assigning the list, procuring the product, allocating it at the right place and ultimately delivering on time. 

Ways to Increase Warehouse Efficiency with Pick List

Optimizing warehouse operations is beyond necessity and for doing it right, it’s important to have a system that not only lets you manage the stocks but provides picker staff tracking as well. As efficient picking leads to delivery accuracy and a thorough streamlined process. 

Read: Essential WMS Features that let you Attain Operational Capabilities

As a business owner, if you’re in splits over declining growth rates or waning productivity, there are surely some adjustments that can help in making the picking process effective – 

1. Assigning Pick List to the Agent 

Once a pick list is ready to be assigned, consider assigning it to the right agent. When the picker is assigned manually, there can be more errors & delays as you can never track picker efficiency accurately, but, through incorporating a warehouse management solution, picker is assigned automatically through analyzing their regular activity logs and tracking the efficiency as well. Alongside,  the pick list can be assigned based on the order location or can be filtered based on the marketplace as well, for instance, you can assign picker location wise – Picker A for Delhi, Picker B for Bangalore etc. This will save time and get the deliveries done quickly and accurately. Also, if the picker is assigned based on the marketplaces such as Flipkart, Amazon etc., this again helps in quick deliveries and lesser SLA breach, and streamlined operations. This can further facilitate knowing where the process lacks and finding the reason for delivery delay loopholes, helping a business to streamline the order delivery process.

Read: Enhance the Operations of the Warehouse with Order Picking: Process and Methods

2. Consider Right Placement

Larger warehouses might have tons of products stored in and the placement of the products might be the prime reason for delays. Why? If the highest selling SKUs are kept at the extreme ends of a single warehouse, it might eat up heaps of time for the picking staff. Be wise in organizing your inventory in such a way that picking can be done faster. While in most cases inventory organization is done by SKU number, it’s always better to have it organized based on the probability of being bought together. This can save your time and ultimately get deliveries quicker.

3. Give a Thought to Storage Racks 

This might seem an underrated idea but can actually save you a lot of time! Picking up the right racks for your warehouse is another good option to consider. It’s also good to have elevated racks that are easy for the conveyor belts but, in case manual picking is your go-to, trust the floor racks which are easier and faster to access for the pickers. 

Final Thoughts

Pick list optimization is an integral part of every ecommerce business, though there’s a dire need to automate or digitize the warehouse processes to make order management, inventory management, and returns management more streamlined. Incorporating a warehouse management system (WMS) in your business can effectively help in making the supply chain run smooth and error free. A few adjustments in the way your warehouse is being operated can help in fewer errors and promote faster & more accurate deliveries.

Related read:

• What is a Warehouse Management System (WMS)?
• What are the challenges in Order Management?
• Healthcare Industry Challenges, Opportunities & Solutions in India

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FIFO Based Picking for Inventory Management in the Warehouse

Many retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers or even e-commerce sellers have hundreds of locations to carry thousands of items. But majorly face these three specific challenges with the inventory-

• Out of Stock
• Shrinkage
• Outdated

Stock rotation to avoid loss due to out of date inventory is the prime issue companies face which even digs them into huge losses if not managed efficiently in time. Many businesses have the inventory with an expiration date. So, shipping the items on the principle of “First in, First Out“, protects the product quality and freshness. Using FIFO, you can ship products relatively in neat and clean boxes, as products would have spent less time in your warehouse.

Companies that sell perishable products, such as food products, medicines or in trend fashion accessories, apparels, footwear etc. commonly follow FIFO as their method for inventory valuation.

For example, a medical store purchases medicines at regular intervals to stock its shelves. As customers purchase medicines, the stockers push the oldest medicine carton to the front of the shelf and replace medicines with new MFG date behind those cartons. The cartons of medicines with the nearest expiration dates are sold first, whereas the ones with later expiration dates are sold after the older medicines. This ensures that the first products purchased will be the first products sold!

Read: How Urban Company Achieved 8X Growth in 27 Months with Unicommerce’s Warehouse Management Solution!

Benefits of Adapting FIFO Inventory Software based Picking in Warehouse

1. Reduce Inventory Loss Due to Obsolescence

Outdated or obsolete products aren’t an issue for most of the industries. But for those who deal in perishable products, to remove the outdated inventory is the costliest and most unnecessary task in a warehouse. Use of FIFO in such industries ensures the products to be picked and shipped as quickly as possible.

2. Improved Customer Experience

Reduce the number of incidents where customers can receive an older, obsolete product due to improper rotation of stock in your warehouse. With FIFO you can now ensure a better user experience and deliver a fresh product which is cleanly packed.

3. Warranty Control Improvements

With FIFO implemented in your warehouse, define Shelf life, Expiry, Manufacturing Date & Tolerance. This will eliminate incidents of shipping products that are close to or past warranty expiration.

4. Make Your Warehouse Stock Rotation Efficient

Implementing FIFO will ensure that you ship the most recent and desirable products to your customers. It is the most widely used inventory valuation method as it is practically much easier and safer for companies to opt.

Related read – How FIFO & FEFO Methods Minimize Stock Losses for Business

Let’s Manage Inventory Smartly!

By implementing FIFO, businesses can effectively overcome common inventory challenges, streamline operations, and ultimately contribute to higher customer satisfaction and profitability. Adopting such a robust system is vital for the success of any inventory-dependent business.

More resources:

• • • Top Multichannel Inventory Management Challenges and Solutions
    • Inventory Management Software – Top 9 Benefits
    • Top Challenges & Solutions of Inventory Management
    • Why do e-commerce businesses need Inventory Management Software?
    • Types of Inventory Management Techniques
    • UniShip – Advanced Shipping Tracking Platform
    • UniReco – E-commerce Marketplace Payment Reconciliation
    • Key Challenges & Benefits of Marketplace Payment Reconciliation
    • Benefits of Shipping Notifications
    • E-commerce Shopify Integration with Unicommerce

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