Order Picking Strategies

Picking consists of collecting articles according to a customer’s order before shipping them.
Picking uses a huge amount of resources and usually takes 60% or more of the warehouse’s staff to perform the process.
Order picking has an effect on the overall level of service to the customer, irrespective of whether the customer is an internal or external customer.
In order to achieve an effective order picking system the following principles should be considered:
- Picking methods and equipment must be appropriate for the application;
- Stock availability at the picking face must be maintained with effective replenishment;
- Picking stock should be concentrated into the smallest feasible area;
- Effective information systems to order pickers;
- Addressing stock rotation and other constraints;
- A performance monitoring system to address speed, accuracy and completeness of the process.

In discrete picking a picker is responsible for picking all the items in a single order during a pick-tour.
In batch picking several orders are batched (or grouped) together and a picker picks all the items in a given batch.
In Zone picking requires that each picker is assigned to a specific region of the storage area and is responsible for picking the items in that region only.
In Bucket brigade picking, which is actually a control policy for executing discrete order picking, requires that as soon as the most downstream picker completes an order, he/she walks back to take over the order the picker immediately upstream of him/her is currently picking.
Cluster picking is a methodology of picking into multiple order containers at one time.
Wave picking Wave picking is very similar to discrete picking in that one picker picks one order, one SKU at a time.