What Is Warehouse Picking?
A Complete Guide to Methods, Challenges, and Conveyor Solutions

Inefficient warehouse processes cost you time and money.

The longer it takes to find, move, and prepare items for shipping, the more you spend before the product leaves your property, reducing your total profit margin. Improved warehouse picking can help streamline these tasks, making it easier to get goods from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time.

In our complete guide to warehouse picking, we’ll explore potential picking methods, call out common challenges, and offer operational solutions to help pick up the pace.

What Is Warehouse Picking?

Warehouse picking, also called order picking or preparation, is the process of finding specific items in your inventory to fill customer orders. It’s worth noting that picking is distinct from receiving, packing, and shipping. For warehouse operations to be effective, each of these processes must occur in a specific sequence, which is:

Receiving --> Picking -->  Packing -->  Shipping 

In the receiving stage, businesses receive goods or components from manufacturers, which are then stored in a warehouse. Picking comes next. Your company receives an order, and order pickers locate the item.

This is followed by packing — the item is moved by pickers to the packing station, where it is placed in a box, bag, or other container. Shipping is the final step: Packed items are loaded on trucks for transportation to local distribution facilities or sent directly to consumers. 

Why Picking Matters: Speed, Accuracy, and Safety

The picking process is often a bottleneck for companies. In fact, research suggests that picking accounts for anywhere between 55% and 70% of warehousing costs.

Two factors contribute to this bottleneck. The first is warehouse layouts. If warehouses are overfilled or items are stacked and stored haphazardly, order pickers can spend hours looking for the correct product to pull and package.

The second factor is the order of operations. For example, if a company receives multiple orders at the same time, attempting to pick all of them simultaneously can result in multiple staff trying to access the same storage or shelving systems at the same time, or create a backup at packing stations if 10, 20, or 50 items arrive simultaneously. For picking to succeed, it must be safe, accurate, and speedy.

If companies miss the mark on picking processes, they may encounter issues such as: 

• Increased labor costs: The more time staff spend moving items, avoiding bottlenecks, and correcting mistakes, the more your company pays in labor. Consider an e-commerce warehouse picking hundreds of items per hour. Even minor congestion around packing stations can cause an accordion effect that makes it almost impossible for companies to keep pace. This means staff are working more hours and more overtime to complete picking tasks.
• Higher error rate: Without a clear picking system in place, error rates increase. For example, many companies have similar products with similar SKUs that have significantly different price points. Pulling the wrong item means more work to restock it and find the correct product.
• More workplace injuries: Warehouse space is expensive. As a result, companies design warehouses for maximum efficiency using the minimum amount of space. In practice, this often means narrow aisleways that have multiple pathways to packing stations and docks. Haphazard picking can lead to injuries from accidental collisions, falls, or insecure stacking. 
• Fulfillment delays: The issues above can lead to fulfillment delays, which can cost you money. As noted by research firm McKinsey, almost half of consumers will shop elsewhere if delivery times are too long. These delivery times are directly impacted by your picking processes — the longer it takes to pick, move, and package items, the farther you stray from promised delivery windows.
• Falling customer satisfaction: Slow delivery times — and even worse, shipping the wrong item to consumers — lead to falling satisfaction. Given the sheer number of both brick-and-mortar and online stores now offering quick (and often free) delivery, problems with picking lead to falling satisfaction, which drives customer churn.
• Common Types of Automated Picking Systems

There’s no “right” way to pick items from your warehouse. Instead, it’s about finding the method that delivers the best results for your company.

Some common picking systems include:

Piece picking 

Companies pick, pack, and ship one item at a time. While this approach lowers the risk of errors and backlogs, it’s both time- and resource-intensive. Larger retailers or companies experiencing growth quickly outgrow piece picking processes.

Batch picking 

Batch picking sees companies picking and packing multiple orders simultaneously. It is much more efficient than piece picking but is also significantly more complex, requiring automated picking solutions to reduce errors.

Zone picking 

In a zone picking approach, staff or automated picking tools are assigned a specific area of your warehouse and only pick items from that area. An order moves through multiple zones until all items have been picked, at which point it is sent to the packing stations.

Wave picking 

Wave picking is a more complex form of zone picking. Instead of picking single orders from a zone, wave picking uses WMS software to identify multiple, similar order sets and pick them simultaneously. Wave picking is often combined with robotic inventory management to increase picking speed and accuracy.

Warehouse Picking Challenge in the Dock Zone 

While inefficiencies can occur at any point in the picking process, the dock zones are often at higher risk of picking problems. In practice, four operational variables make this area prone to backlogs:

1. Space constraints — Dock entrances may be narrow, and depending on the configuration of warehouse doors, it may be difficult to maneuver multiple large objects simultaneously. This can lead to long wait times — if your dock can only handle five items at a time and you have 15 orders waiting, you lose productivity.
2. Traffic congestion — Staff and picking vehicles may end up in the same place at the same time, creating traffic congestion that must be resolved before orders can be fully processed.
3. Varied SKUs — If one product or component has multiple SKUs in your database, it can lead to confusion about what’s been picked and what’s still outstanding. This leads to redundant work and wasted effort. 
4. Manual errors — Manual data entry of product SKUs, dimensions, and picking confirmations can lead to errors. For example, if staff enter the wrong picking data, this can lead to confusion around what has been picked and what remains.

How Conveyor Systems Improve Picking Efficiency

Conveyor systems are one of the best approaches for improved picking efficiency. While advancements such as autonomous picking vehicles and AI-driven software tools also contribute to better picking, conveyors are ideally suited to both reduce manual labor and decrease error rates.

Key benefits of conveyor solutions include:

• Decreased walking times and manual transfers: Conveyors reduce the amount of time staff spend walking and help eliminate manual transfers, in turn boosting productivity while reducing error rates.
• Reduced injury risks: Implementing conveyors means fewer people and vehicles moving across warehouse floors. This reduces the risk of injuries due to inattention or equipment failure. Safety risks are further reduced with the addition of autonomous warehouse robots.
• Improved throughput: Conveyors can move objects significantly faster than staff can walk and can move products more safely than staff on forklifts or other vehicles. The result is improved throughput without increased effort. Consider parcel conveyor systems for post offices or other logistics providers — as parcel volumes increase, manual management becomes almost impossible.
• Simplified process integration: Conveyors integrate easily with sorting and packing processes. For example, conveyors can deliver goods directly to packing stations to streamline the process.

Solutions From FMH: Conveyor Systems That Support Picking

FMH offers multiple conveyor systems to support your picking preferences and improve overall performance. 

Telescopic conveyors 

Telescopic conveyor systems extend from the end of permanent conveyors to the nose of truck trailers, making it easier to get cargo in and out of your warehouse. FMH provides extensive customization options to meet your needs.

Rigid modular conveyors 

Rigid modular conveyors for structured picking lines, also called live roller conveyors, are modular solutions that adapt to changing demand needs tied to seasonal peaks or everyday process fluctuations.

Flexible gravity and power conveyors 

Flexible gravity and power conveyors can easily expand or contract to provide maximum ergonomic benefit. It’s also worth considering flexible gravity conveyors for dynamic SKU handling since they can be configured to handle multiple package sizes, weights, shapes, and volumes. 

Motion06 curved belt conveyors 

Motion06 designs advanced curved belt conveyors that include features such as self-tracking and item accumulation. These conveyors can also be equipped with photo eye sensors that detect the presence (or absence) of items without the need for physical contact. Combined with robotic order picking, these conveyors can significantly improve throughput. 

Along with conveyors, FMH is also on the leading edge of warehouse robotics in supply chain management. Together, these systems enable better performance, increased accuracy, and improved reliability. 

Who Benefits From Streamlined Picking With Conveyors? 

Streamlined picking benefits any business that operates a warehouse or distribution center and handles significant order volumes. 

For example, automotive manufacturers can use conveyors to ensure parts get to workstations quickly and accurately. B2C businesses that sell large consumer items such as kitchen appliances or furniture, meanwhile, can leverage retail conveyor solutions to reduce congestion at warehouse docks and packing areas.  

Conveyors are also essential for any business that handles large item volumes, even if the items themselves are variable in size. This includes e-commerce fulfillment centers, third-party logistics (3PL) companies, retail distributors, and parcel hubs. 

Along with industries, specific roles within organizations often prioritize improved picking. They include: 

• Engineering specialists: Engineers focus on ROI and integration, and conveyors offer both. Conveyors are designed to work with existing processes and quickly deliver ROI thanks to improved speed and reduced error rates.
• Operations managers: Ops managers want increased throughput and low downtime. Conveyors excel in each of these areas — they can move items far faster than human pickers and are designed for long-term reliability.
• Safety officers: Safety officers prioritize injury reduction. Conveyors remove risks such as accidental collisions and bottlenecks, both of which can lead to injuries.

Final Thoughts: Evolving Your Warehouse Picking Strategy 

Your warehouse picking strategy can make or break operational success. Haphazard strategies that rely on manual labor or outdated technologies can lead to wasted time and duplicated effort that increases operational complexity and reduces efficiency.

Conveyor solutions from FMH can help. From telescopic solutions to modular frameworks and flexible belts, we’ve got you covered. And it doesn’t stop there — at FMH, we recognize the need for tools that keep pace with changing operational conditions. That’s why we’re dock automation specialists. We don’t simply provide conveyors; we ensure that the systems you select help solve your biggest picking problems.

Ready for a new approach to warehouse picking? Start with our downloadable picking assessment checklist — then get in touch for a free consultation.