Patent ID: 8556567

Claim:
A method for operating an order-picking system, wherein the order-picking system comprises a high-bay warehouse, at least one tray warehouse, at least one packing station, and at least one shipping station, the method comprising: a) depalletizing in a layerwise manner packing units forming a, particularly complete, pallet layer from a pallet, particularly a Europool palette, which carries respectively a plurality of packing units, which are to be picked, of one type of article, onto a correspondingly dimensioned tray; b) bringing the tray loaded with the pallet layer into the tray warehouse, preferably by means of a conveyor, a storage machine and/or a lift; c) recalling the tray loaded with the pallet layer in accordance with an order-picking order or several order-picking orders to the packing station; d) removing, in accordance with the order-picking order or one of the order-picking orders, a predetermined number of packing units, which are to be picked, and packing the removed packing units onto a shipping support, in order to ship the shipping support to a customer, if the order-picking order is completed; wherein the tray is either stored back into the tray warehouse or is disbanded into single packing units after the removal of packing units, if not all packing units of the pallet layer have been removed, the single packing units being transferred onto corresponding single trays and brought subsequently into a separate single-tray warehouse, in order to be brought again to the packing station later for completing another order-picking order.