The key goal in ecommerce fulfillment is efficiency: fast and effective procedures are essential in converting your customer’s order from wish to reality.
For most ecommerce operations, the time between receiving an order and shipping it out is quite short. Depending on which warehouse management system you use, an order could be converted to a “pick” instruction within minutes. This may take the form of a printed pick sheet, or the electronic equivalent on a mobile device.
However, much depends on individual company processes and the picking method used. In some businesses, efficiency dictates that orders are accumulated for a period of time before processing begins, to create combined pick instructions for orders of a similar type. This might involve consolidating orders with the same delivery date or time, or those for a specific delivery service, or even just according to the number of items they contain.
For most picking methods, a separate stage is usually required after picking to prepare orders for dispatch. Generally this is a packing stage where orders are checked for completeness, packaged appropriately and labeled for shipping. This stage requires picked orders to be easily identified, to verify their content and quantity, and is often done using barcodes and a suitable software system.