STOP the Picking Madness!
Has this scenario ever come to pass in your distribution business?
Your Sales Reps represented your products well, which resulted in the customer calling and placing an order. The order was entered and the credit card pre-authorization was approved, pick ticket printed, pickers pulled the order, shipped, and received by your customer.
Your customer opens the perfectly packaged box and inside… is a product they did not order.
As a company, you did 90% of of the process correctly but, in the eyes of your customers, you look 100% wrong. Now you have to cover the costs of correcting this error and redeeming yourself before your customer loses faith in you.
What is one thing you can do in your warehouse to stop costly errors, even if by no direct fault of the pickers themselves?
Start small and walk before you run.
Investigate and answer the question, what is the root cause of the picking error?
- Do you have like products or products with similar packaging next to each other?
- Do you have clear and concise Bin labeling?
These may seem like simple and common practices, but they can cost you serious time and effort when they lead to serious miscues like the one detailed above. The practice of careful bin labeling and placement is often underlooked and can serve as a more cost effective means of preventing picking disasters.
The implementation of an order verification system is also a very viable solution to ensure that all pick tickets are matched correctly to the intended product. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, after all