Tips for Efficient Pick, Pack, and Ship Warehousing
Efficient pick, pack, and ship operations are crucial for order fulfillment and warehouse management. Thus, streamlining these processes is important as they help improve brand visibility, customer satisfaction, and profitability. For many warehouses, automating the pick, pack, and shipping service is the only way to order fulfillment. Although automation helps, some critical factors need to be addressed. This post offers some essential tips that would help you optimize pick, pack, and ship operations, and warehousing management.
Important Tips to Optimize Your Warehousing and Pick and Pack Fulfillment
Streamlining a warehouse for efficient pick and pack fulfillment requires lots of planning. Here are some steps that you can try.
Plan Your Warehouse Layout: Everything starts from a well-organized warehouse. A well-organized warehouse serves as a foundation of an efficient pick, pack, and shipping system. For ease, you can divide your inventory into three types – most frequently picked items, seasonal items or items that are only picked at certain times, and less regularly picked items. Some items may be favored throughout the year; ensure to position them close to the packaging and shipping area. Next, label your bins, shelves, and aisles to facilitate easy navigation for your staff. This will help your team to save time on searching, enabling efficient order fulfillment and improved productivity.
Decide Picking Routes: Focus on your order history to identify the popular order combinations or most frequently purchased combo items. You can group them and place them in easy to access area, which would help minimize the travel time during the pick and shipping service. If there are multiple popular order combinations, you can establish the picking routes as per the priority or the prices. Whatever picking route you decide upon, always reduce the hassles for your staff and vehicles they use to reach to the aisle.
Use Barcode or RFID technology: The radio frequency identification (RFID) and barcodes help improve the accuracy of the pick and shipping process. As known, every item is identified by a specific barcode or RFID tag, which would help you automate your inventory tracking, as well as expedite order processing. Scanning barcodes would help you track the inventory, and reduces the instances of overstocking or understocking.
Invest in Warehouse Management Software: A robust warehouse management software (WMS) system will be an asset to your warehouse. They help generate picking lists, track inventory, assign order pocking, and offer order updates. There are many warehouse management software in the market; however, ensure to choose the one that aligns with your business goals. Also, check if it is compatible with your eCommerce platform, allowing inventory synchronization and hassle-free order processing. Additionally, you can also implement shipping software to generate shipping labels, as well as to automate the carrier selection for quicker order fulfillment.
Streamline packing and shipping: As described in the first two steps, much of the efforts can be reduced by streamlining your picking routes and efficient warehouse layout. Further, you can streamline your packing process using the right packaging material. Always choose the packaging such that it protects the product stored inside and is not overhung on all sides. Ensure, you stock enough packaging materials in the right sizes to ensure efficient packing. You can implement clear labels and packing instructions on each packaging bin to ensure the correct items are included in the package.
Implement quality control measures: You must implement quality control measures to ensure an efficient pick, pack, and ship process. Everything from the order receiving to picking and packing to shipping must be conducted in a streamlined manner. You must create checklists of tasks to be performed in each step to avoid errors. Also, the concerned floor managers must conduct regular checks to ensure accurate order picking, proper packaging, labeling, and shipping. Implementing a double-check system or utilizing automated scanning devices can help minimize errors, increase order accuracy, and boost customer satisfaction.
Train and empower your staff: Well-trained employees are an asset to any warehouse. It doesn’t matter whether an employee performing picking and packing or custom kitting and assembly is experienced or a fresher, you must train them to embrace the right procedures. You must encourage them to adopt the best warehousing processes, order-picking techniques, and safety procedures. You can encourage open communication and feedback to streamline and improve the packing and shipping fulfillment. Additionally, consider cross-training to ensure flexibility and support during peak periods or employee absences.
If your eCommerce business is fast growing and beyond your fulfillment capacity, you can outsource your pick, pack, and ship warehousing services to 3PL Business. When you partner with us, you can be assured of successful order fulfillment with streamlined pick and ship services management processes. Over the years, we have invested in technology and resources and gained immense experiences that help us perform picking, packing, and shipping as per project needs.
We believe there’s no right pick, pack, and ship solution that works for everyone. It depends on your business requirements and growth trajectory. Feel free to call us at (732) 983-4801 or write to us at sales@3plbusiness.com to learn more about our capabilities. We can help you choose the right pick, pack, ship, and warehousing solution that meets your business requirements.