In the fast-paced world of online retail, the key to quick deliveries is efficient order picking. Eshopbox has a solution: user-friendly software guiding your warehouse team through each step, making picking a straightforward task. It's more than just streamlining – Eshopbox simplifies the process, ensuring your warehouse runs smoothly for faster fulfilment and speedy order delivery.

‍

In this blog, we'll discuss how Eshopbox's Warehouse Management System (WMS) can boost your picking speed and help your business excel in the competitive ecommerce market.

‍

Understanding picking rate

‍

Picking rate, simply put, is the speed at which the items are retrieved from your inventory to fulfil customer orders. This metric plays a pivotal role in the day-to-day functioning of your online business, influencing various aspects of your operations. An optimised picking rate can lead to improved customer satisfaction, reduced operational costs, and overall business success.

‍

Now that we have a basic idea of what the picking rate is, let us talk about how Eshopbox can optimise it.

‍

How does Eshopbox’s WMS optimise the picking rate?

‍

Here are some of the cool features of Eshopbox’s WMS that help you improve your warehouse picking rate and drive operational excellence:

‍

1. Smarter picking route allocation

‍

While picking products to fulfil orders, the shorter distance a picker travels, the more efficient the picking process becomes. Our approach to optimising picking rates starts with intelligent route allocation, and here's how our WMS does it.

‍

Whenever our system receives an order, it automatically generates pick lists and assigns them to pickers. What sets us apart is that our system doesn't stop at assigning zones. It also suggests the most efficient route for the picker to collect items within their designated area. This minimises travel time, reduces unnecessary movement, and ultimately speeds up the picking process.

‍

2. Granular level visibility

‍

Eshopbox's Warehouse Management System (WMS) offers top-notch inventory management by providing a granular level of visibility into your stock. By implementing barcode labelling, each unit of your product can be uniquely identified, along with corresponding tote and shelf IDs. With this level of detail, you have the ability to track the location of each product precisely right to the shelf where it is stored.

‍

Granular inventory tracking not only enhances the efficiency of your picking operations but also minimises the risk of overstocking or running out of essential items.

‍

‍

3. Effective picking with a 100% scan-based system

‍

Our system makes all the operations within the warehouse automated with the help of a scan-based system, ensuring accuracy and speed at every step of the process. To be specific, our WMS prompts the picker to do the scans at three different stages of the picking process:

‍

1. First, the shelf is scanned before picking the items as per the picklist

‍

‍

2. After that, our system prompts the picker to scan the scannable identifier or the item barcode. For SKU-level traceability, the scannable identifier is scanned, while the barcode is scanned for item-level traceability.

‍

‍

3. Lastly, the tote is scanned, in which the items are put and taken for picking.

‍

‍

So, by scanning and updating the status of each item at each stage of the picking process, our system ensures 100% precision.

‍

4. Blue-collar friendly software

‍

Eshopbox understands that not all warehouse workers are tech experts. That's why our software is designed in a way that is super easy to use.  Instead of overwhelming warehouse staff with all the tasks at once, our system shows one task at a time, guiding the picker at every step. For instance, you can see the screenshots above to see that our system shows only a single step at a time with a friendly UI and easy-to-understand instructions.

‍

Additionally, our WMS is 100% scan-based and doesn’t require workers to manually enter any data at any step of the picking process.

‍

Another example of our WMS being convenient is that it manages exceptions very well. For example, if any item is not found on the shelf, your picker can mark it as not found, and our WMS immediately prompts the picker to go to the next shelf where inventory is available. This saves time and increases the picking rate.

‍

5. Batch tracking and expiry management

‍

With Eshopbox’s WMS, you don’t need to worry about manually keeping track of the expiry date of your inventory. Our WMS does it for you. You can enable batch tracking for the products with an expiry date.

‍

Enabling batch tracking allows our WMS to group similar products based on manufacturing or stop-ship dates. While assigning orders, Eshopbox’s WMS follows the ‘First stop-ship date, First out’ rule in order to reduce the risk of any products expiring in storage.

‍

Even if you haven’t enabled batch tracking, our WMS follows the ‘First In, First Out’ rule to ensure that your inventory is managed efficiently. This means that the products that arrived first are the ones that will be shipped out first. This helps prevent older products from sitting in storage for too long.

‍

‍

Moreover, our expiry management ensures that items nearing their expiry date don't make it into customer orders, which means fewer customer complaints and less waste.

‍

Since our WMS follows the ‘first in first out’ rule, you do not need to manually check for the expiration date of each item. It makes the picking process faster and error-free.

‍

In addition to expiration date management, Eshopbox's WMS also provides real-time alerts for products nearing their expiry dates. This proactive feature empowers you to take timely actions, such as adjusting pricing, initiating promotions, or prioritizing the sale of items with approaching expiration dates.

‍

6. Use of KPIs to improve picking rate

‍

Our WMS analyses KPIs and maintains reports that you can use to improve your picking process. By tracking these metrics, you can identify areas for improvement and implement targeted strategies to optimise the picking process further.

‍

Some of the metrics that we track to help increase the picking rate include:

‍

• Picking accuracy: It is the measure of how precisely and error-free items are picked from inventory to fulfil customer orders within a warehouse.

‍

• Fill rate: It is the percentage of customer orders fulfilled directly from available inventory in a warehouse, without resorting to backorders or waiting for replenishment.

‍

• Picker productivity: It is the amount of time taken by each picker to pick all the items from a picklist.

‍

Bottom line

‍

A fast and accurate picking process is your key to success. Eshopbox's Warehouse Management System (WMS) offers cutting-edge features like intelligent route allocation, barcode labelling, and user-friendly software to make this happen.

‍

With Eshopbox, you're not just keeping up; you're outperforming the competition. Elevate your ecommerce game today with our WMS.