Like other e-commerce vendors, you rely on warehouse accuracy when the picking staff prepares your orders for shipping. After all, customer satisfaction is the foundation of your success. You can’t satisfy your customer base without accurate, timely orders.
For example, cosmetics fulfillment with Streamline Fulfillment eliminates mistakes from start to finish. We know how to reduce picking and packing errors and will share our insights below.
The Picking and Packing Process
You likely follow a simple three-step process to ship out your goods:
- Your in-house team picks the available products or materials for an order through the inventory management system.
- Next, they securely pack them with the shipping materials to protect each item during transit.
- Finally, they process and ship the outbound order to the next location.
While many businesses implement this process, they often employ variations within each step to suit their needs. Closely examining your pick-pack-ship process might uncover problems that slow productivity or result in avoidable errors.
Common Picking and Packing Errors
Most mistakes under your control occur during the pick or pack steps rather than during shipment. Any successful business will investigate where it falls short and find remedies to its shortcomings. When examining your process, you might discover the following common errors:
- Space limitations: If you have a small or crowded warehouse, you might struggle to figure out where products are because they seem to be packed on top of each other.
- Product discrepancies: A picker might choose a similar but incorrect order number, substitute a missing product with the wrong one, or misplace the order details.
- Personnel confusion: Your staff might pick the same batch twice or never pick it all because of miscommunications or incorrect batch-picking inputs.
- Mislocated items: Perhaps you began picking a batch but moved on to another task. You might have your starting details logged into the system yet can’t find a designated place to put the partial order, leading to item mislocation and incomplete fulfillment.
- No order prioritization: Some customers pay top dollar for their orders to arrive at their earliest convenience. If you choose an order that can wait a few days first, you could risk botching the priority shipments.
- Lack of synergy: Trainees and employees unfamiliar with a specific task can accidentally slow down the process.
How to Reduce Picking and Packing Errors
When learning how to reduce picking and packing errors, you can explore and implement the practical solutions listed below.
- Overcome limited storage with space optimization through zone picking.
- Use a traceability system to alleviate miscommunication among your picker staff.
- Integrate coding system improvements for more precise inventory management and identification.
- Keep order details and batches in one place through digital inventory management solutions.
- Use urgency labels to identify orders your pickers should prioritize.
- Combine automated picking technology with a well-rounded, cross-trained staff to enhance your batch-picking strategy.
Work with Streamline Fulfillment to Solve Your Picking and Packing Problems
You can’t build Rome in a day. Similarly, learning how to reduce picking and packing errors takes time. Streamline Fulfillment helps you with managing returns and sorting zones with expert fulfillment solutions. Contact us to improve your shipping strategies.