Manual vs. Automatic Picking

Manual or automatic? Pick wisely. The order picking process in the warehouse can be much harder or easier depending on which method you choose to do it in.

Manual:

When you manually pick orders, you have to do so by writing out a pick ticket or memorizing everything in the order and doing it purely by mental notes. That’s not easy or advisable.

Problems:

What if you forget something? You could also get the wrong number of items or the wrong types of items. This is an especially big problem if you have products that come in a lot of different colors, sizes, etc. In addition, these orders usually have to be manually picked one at a time. It’s difficult to plan on picking multiple orders at the same time in the absence of any tools to make that happen. So you’ll wind up going through your warehouse management process longer than necessary to pick all of your orders.

Automatic:

A business automation platform can automatically generate a picking route for a single order or a batch of orders. That way, warehouse workers know where to go in the warehouse to spend the least amount of time necessary getting all of the parts to fulfill the order. They can also use barcode scanners to correctly identify items and locations within the warehouse to ensure they’re in the right place and they’re picking the right parts.

Solutions:

Adding automation to the picking process dramatically improves warehouse workers’ accuracy. Everything is clearly laid out on an automatically generated pick ticket, and there’s very little chance of mixing up parts or getting the wrong number of them. Batch picking makes it possible to speed everything up. Workers don’t have to return to a section of the warehouse multiple times to get more of the same item. When they’re at an item that is in more than one order, they can simply grab the total number they need for all of the orders while they’re there.