Moving to a paperless solution is crucial for making your team the most efficient it can be when processing orders. This article is a general overview of some of the pre-work involved to ensure your order processing teams are set up for success. Use the information below to evaluate your current operations and take action on optimizing your warehouse processes.
Setting the Foundation for Order Processing
Before starting your order processing operations you want to ensure that the orders and warehouse floor are organized in a manner that will make the process easy and efficient for your warehouse teams.
1. Segment Orders with Custom Statuses and Tags
First, segment your orders by grouping similar ones together. This reduces unnecessary travel time and confusion.
Custom Statuses allow you to categorize orders based on:
- Item Size: Separate orders with large items that need a forklift from orders with small, easily handled items.
- Order Size: Differentiate between small and large orders.
- Order Mix: Isolate orders with high-value or hazardous items for specialized handling.
- Priority: Designate urgent orders to be shipped faster.
- By Picker: Assign specific orders to individual pickers.
Order Tags work with custom statuses to further refine order segmentation. A picker assigned to a specific status and tag will only see orders that meet both criteria. Both statuses and tags can be set automatically using automation rules.
The Priority Flag tells ShipHero to prioritize certain orders when creating a batch. This is useful for urgent or high-value orders. Like statuses and tags, this flag can be set automatically with automation rules.
2. Optimize Your Location Naming
How you name your locations directly impacts picking efficiency. Here is more infomration on Optimizing your Warehouse Layout with a Naming Scheme.
- Sort Alpha-Numerically: Use the same number of digits for all locations and pad with zeros (e.g., A02, A11). This ensures a logical picking path.
- Meaningful Prefixes: Location prefixes should correspond to nearby locations, like an aisle or section.
- Zigzag for Narrow Aisles: For narrow aisles, name locations to allow for a zigzag pattern. This enables pickers to pick from both sides in one pass.
- Snake Pattern for Long Aisles: In very long aisles, a snake pattern can be more efficient. The end of one aisle is next to the start of the next, so pickers don't have to walk all the way back. Use clear signs to guide them.
Establish your Order Processing Methods
Now that you have set the foundation in your warehouse it's time to determine the best methods for processing your orders. ShipHero provides a varietry of order processing solutions to fit the specific needs for your business, including Single Order processing, Bulk Shipping, and Batch Picking.
- Single Order Processing is completing one order at a time.
- Bulk Shipping is batching identical orders together and processing them all at once.
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Batch Picking is picking items for multiple orders simultaneously. ShipHero has two different batch picking methods: Single Item Batch and Multi-Item Batch.
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- Single Item Batch Picking organizes single-item orders into batches. It can be useful for high-volume sales or if you commonly receive requests for an individual SKU.
- Multi Item Batch Picking allows Pickers to pick multiple orders with different quantities of products into unique totes. This process separates orders as you are picking, so you don't have to spend time sorting through products when preparing to pack and ship orders.
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1. Handle Single-Item Orders Separately
Single-item orders can be less efficient to pick in a multi-item batch because they offer fewer opportunities to group items. Use Bulk Ship and Single Item Batch to process these orders separately. This keeps your multi-item batches focused on orders with more items in common.
You can also use a setting to exclude single-line item orders from multi-item batch picking. If you enable this, make sure you consistently use Bulk Ship and Single Item Batch features to ensure these orders get picked.
2. Choose the Right Batch Optimization Settings
Optimizing batches in ShipHero is key to efficient warehouse picking. By using a combination of system settings and thoughtful strategies, you can ensure your team picks orders in the most efficient way possible.
ShipHero offers multiple settings to determine how orders are sorted and batches are optimized. You can change these at any time to match your needs. Below are the most common options used. For more information on the other batch settings available visit our article, Optimizing Batch Picking Settings.
- Minimize Walk for Same Location: Best for smaller warehouses with mixed bins. It groups orders with items from the same location to reduce travel distance.
- Minimize Walk by Location Prefix: Ideal for larger warehouses with many SKUs. It groups orders with items from locations that share the same prefix, like all locations in Aisle 1.
- Required Ship Date and Priority: Prioritizes orders based on their required ship date. This ensures time-sensitive orders are picked first, even if it means a less efficient walking path.