15. Slow packing process
Do you have a business
that requires you to pick and pack your small items into an outer carton for
shipping? These might be large B2B
orders or small orders from an online B2C business. Do you have separate picking and packing
functions? This is a common
mistake as it is inefficient due to the double handling of
each item. It is handled once by the
picker and then again by the packer who will usually also be responsible for
performing a double check of each item as they pack it into a carton. This is simply a waste of effort that adds no
value. According to the principles of
Lean, re-packing is a waste of motion, and double checking is a waste of
over-processing.
The solution is to
pick to carton wherever possible so that each item is handled only once. This is fine if your typical order size is
large but will be slow if your orders are small and you have a large product
range and a significant warehouse travel path to pick each small order. To get around this problem you need to adopt
multi-order picking so that you can pick many orders in each pass through the
warehouse. See mistake 14 on picking
strategies for more information on how you can pick more efficiently.
Pick to carton will
require you to know what size carton you need to contain the order. A sophisticated WMS will give you this
information based on the weights and measures for each item. If you do not have this then you will need an
experienced operator to assess the carton requirements or simply have a supply
of different sized flat cartons on the picking trolley to select from once the
operator can see the size of the items to be picked. Another method is to pick to a plastic bag
which can then be put into a suitable sized carton at the end of the pick. Pick to bag is also useful if your items are
really small and you want to pick a lot of small orders in one pass and put
them into cartons later. There is also
no reason why you can’t pick directly to Post-packs or other freight bags.
The key is to be able
to identify what order is in what plastic bag or carton so that at the end of
the pick the order can be confirmed and shipped correctly. This can be done by attaching the pick slip
or a label with the order number to the carton or bag. With a sophisticated WMS you would be able to
know the correct carton size and print a shipping label for each carton so that
at the end of the pick the order would be complete and ready for shipping,
saving you even more time.
The assumption of this
process is of course that the order has been picked accurately and no further
checking is necessary. If you have been
picking on paper and packing separately for years then you will know that you
have a certain percentage of picking errors.
However I will wager that your packers do not find all the errors and
that you still have service failures as a result. On a pragmatic level you can look at the
relative costs of the excess labour in packing vs. the costs of service
failures and make a decision, but a cheap process that damages your business
through poor service is not really the answer either. A better way is to make use of available
technology to improve your productivity and build quality into your picking
process.
A WMS with wireless
terminals making use of barcode scanning or voice directed picking will usually
have a payback of around six months depending on the size of your
business. This technology will allow you
to provide improved service to your customers and reduce your costs at the same
time. I do want to stress however that
in accordance with the principles of process design you design the process you
need for your business first and pick the technology second. So although a WMS is a highly desirable
technology it is also possible to achieve the same result with a paper based
system.
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