Patent ID: 7031801

Claim:
A method in a computing system for shipping a shipment, comprising: selecting a shipment for shipping, the selected shipment identifying a plurality of items to be included in the shipment; selecting a first item among the plurality of items; issuing a pick directive for the first item to a picker; receiving a pick confirmation identifying a first time at which the first item was picked; adding to the first time an expected travel time for the first item to obtain a sorter dwell start time; adding a target sorter dwell duration to the sorter dwell start time to obtain a sorter dwell end time; for each of the items of the plurality other than the first item: subtracting an expected travel time for the item from the sorter dwell start time to obtain a pick window start time for the item; subtracting the expected travel time for the item from the sorter dwell end time to obtain a pick window end time for the item; and issuing a pick directive for the item at a time to a picker between the item's pick window start time and pick window end time.