How does waveless picking optimise your warehouse?

When looking to optimise your warehouse, picking speeds are a major priority. 

You want a solution that’s faster, better, more efficient and more accurate than your current model. A picking system that is harmonised with both your stock control, your inventory management, and your order processing systems.  

To do that you want waveless picking, and to do it best, you want it designed, delivered, and maintained by Invar and using IWS.

But what is waveless picking? To answer that, we first need to explain waved picking. To explain that, we need to know what a “wave” means in the context of a warehouse. 

Waves are lists of orders that need to be picked, packed, and moved on to the next stage of the intralogistics process. Waves are assembled by your warehouse management software (WMS) when a collection of orders are received, and then sent out on paper, by voice, or by any other means to the picking staff to be collected and delivered along the chain of tasks. 

The problem with this system is delays are inevitable. While one wave is delt with, orders continue coming in. This happens in real time while every picker works through routes from the current wave as the new one is being formed.  

Your WMS has no choice but to wait until the previous wave is done before the next one can be sent out. Except while that wave is then dealt with, more orders continue to arrive. 

This is what waved picking is, and this is why it is so fundamentally flawed. 

Waveless picking is radically different. It involves updating and re-adjusting the ways that picking processes are planned out in real-time.  

As new orders come in, new routes and routines of picking are devised and planned live. The work gets done as it arrives. No additional delays. No slowdowns from waiting for more waves. 

This is made possible with the kind of modern warehousing equipment that IWS is intrinsically compatible with. With wireless linkings to hand held terminals, picking lists can be updated and optimised for the most efficient possible workflows as the day progresses.  

Your intralogistics need not be shackled to a simplistic set up of “first come, first served”. Instead, you can go much faster, and much further, with your picking planned around your wider warehouse, and which orders come closer together. 

Improve your warehousing situation with waveless picking, delivered by IWS. 

 

Waveless picking is just the beginning of what IWS can offer your business. Learn more today. 

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