It's a common challenge during peak Holiday season. Every year, thousands for warehouses across the world ramp up for an explosion of shipping that challenges even the most sophisticated warehouse managers. By some estimates, Catalog and E-Commerce businesses generate nearly 60% of their annual sales in the last four months of the calendar alone.
One common "challenge," which might be considered a "good problem to have" is the "hit product" where there are hundreds or even thousands of orders every day for a single product that everyone wants...or wants to give as a gift. When there are so many single-item orders for the same item like this, it seems wasteful to run all of them through the standard picking, sorting and packing process that a typical order would go through.
Pick-Pack-Ship from the Receiving Dock?
What if we could skip all the standard sub-processes and ship our hot items right off the pallet from the receiving dock without even putting any of the incoming inventory away? It's actually pretty easy if you prep for it right. Kevin Ledversis, Sales Director at Newcastle Systems, created this nifty demo not only to show how it's done but how to make sure you do it as quickly and ACCURATELY as possible.
With two thermal printers loaded on a mobile-powered cart, one person can pick-pack AND ship 50-80 orders an hour depending on the product.
Watch the video as Kevin shows how simple and fast it can be:
"Creativity" is a Signature Skill of an Efficient Warehouse
With a little creativity, your warehouse team could even come up with a fully-loaded mobile packing station to optimize this option. What other opportunities like this exist in your facility? Over the years we've seen no end to the creative solutions created by warehouse teams. Usually, it starts with observing something more clearly after stepping away from it a bit, or asking the right questions as you eyeball everyone going about their daily tasks on the floor:
- What repetitive task or sub-process accounts for a large portion of our labor or total time?
- Where do my people get inconvenienced or tire by excessive movement - walking, lifting, moving?
- What tasks do we have with different names that are almost the same thing (or the same thing in reverse - like Receiving and Shipping can sometimes be)?
- What tasks would be easier if we went to the product rather than move the product to us?
There are so many questions, which questions do you often ask yourself? Share your own creative solutions in the comments, or ask us a question - and maybe we can have Kevin make a video for us to answer that too.
