Pointers: The improvement of order picking operations result in the following :
- Minimisation of the throughput time of an order
- Reduction of the overall throughput time
- Maximum utilisation of space
- Maximum utilisation of the warehouse equipment
- Maximum utilisation of workforce or labour
- Maximisation of access to various items or products.
Warehouses are crucial elements to any supply chain and are regarded as extremely important, especially for the manufacturing and retail industry. Though earlier warehouses were simply regarded as godowns which would assist in the storage and stockpiling of goods, now they have grown in their efficiency and the range of services that could be derived out of them. Now warehouses are being considered as assets to businesses rather than being considered as stationary liabilities.
Importance of Order Picking procedures :
The efficiency and effectiveness of any supply chain are dependent upon the seamless functioning and neat performance of warehouse operations. The fluctuations of the market and the ever-changing uncertainty of consumer demand can only be addressed through competent warehousing operations.
Basic warehousing operations include the following :
- Receiving
- Putting away
- Storage
- Order picking and
- Despatching of raw materials or products.
Order picking can be deemed as the most arduous task amongst all other warehousing operations and is also associated with high cost. Order picking involves the receiving of raw materials and products or items from a warehouse according to the customer requests and requisitions. It also involves the development of a schedule which depends upon customer orders. Therefore Order Picking is all about establishing a sequence of defining the perfect locations in the warehouse where each product or raw material is stored according to the customer requests. This process essentially emulates the model of a travelling salesman.
This process is a consolidation of singular or multiple ordered items and has the following impacts :
- Tremendous influence on the speed of delivery
- Direct influence on the level of customer service and consequent satisfaction.
Performance Enhancement of warehousing operations :
Warehousing operations include a flurry of activities and various functions that can be categorised as essential elements of such activities. Using competent frontline managers who control various aspects of fulfilment definitely boosts employee morale and the quality of customer order fulfilment. Creating regular feedback from the employees on their individual as well as departmental performance helps in improving warehousing operations to a huge extent.
Still, performance enhancement of warehousing operations can be most effectively done by employing a customised warehouse management system which is equipped with the necessary data and analytics software to compute the best and cost effective procedures for the particular warehouse. Making the use of efficient warehouse management system software can massively increase the productivity of the warehouse and results in better inventory control. Integrating voice enabling technology to the WMS can result in a fast ROI as it augments the quality of shipping, receiving and returns.
How does the improvement in order picking and operations enhancement impact warehousing operations :
The improvement of order picking operations result in the following :
- Minimisation of the throughput time of an order
- Reduction of the overall throughput time
- Maximum utilisation of space
- Maximum utilisation of the warehouse equipment
- Maximum utilisation of workforce or labour
- Maximisation of the access to various items or products.
Optimisation of the order picking procedure involves the optimisation of the duration of the following activities.
- Travelling time required by the picker to go and pick the item
- Search time required to find the required products
- Retrieval time which is required to retrieve the products from their particular locations
- Return time which is required by the pickers while transporting the products to the point of the order placement.
The primary functions of the WMS can be enumerated as :
- Minimisation of the paperwork and write off involved in various warehousing functions
- Complete integration of the warehousing functions so that the organisation can make effective connections between individual procedures
- Effective performance of picking, packing and shipping services
- Efficient expiry management
- Multi-carrier shipping toolkit development.
A streamlined WMS also helps in solving the following issues :
- Reduction of manual tasks and the associated errors
- Late invoice and late shipments can also be effectively reduced
- Proper information of inventory control can be ensured
- Allocating the storage locations of specific products.
Therefore the augmentation and development of order picking procedures as well as performance enhancement of other functions through WMS can result in the improvement of the quality of warehousing.