How does picking work?

Picking

Picking refers to the act of collecting the products in an order from the warehouse. There are various ways ways to do this:

• With the scanner
• With a pick-to-light system
• With an individual paper picking order for each order
• With a picking order for multiple orders

When verifying an order, the system will select the locations where an order must be picked.

Location choice

If a product in an order is stored in multiple locations, the location is selected as follows. If it concerns a Food product, the location with the best-before date that will expire first is chosen. Next, locations that are manually accessible are prioritised.

Then, locations with the smallest stock are prioritised (so they can be cleared out first). This is not the case if an order can be picked all at once a large location. This is done to keep the number of picks as low as possible.

An exception is made for pick-to-light: if one of the products is in a pick-to-light system, the WMS will try to only select locations in the pick-to-light system (so the entire order can be picked from the pick-to-light system). This takes precedence over locations with the smallest stock, but not over the best-before date. In other words, if an older batch is stored elsewhere in the warehouse, the order will not be picked from the pick-to-light system.