The Best Way to Avoid Errors During the Picking and Packing Process

There is no profit-destroying factor more potent than errors made while picking, packing, or shipping orders. Such mistakes sap the life blood out of established reputations, hard won on sweat, labour, and clever marketing. Mistakes made in picking, packing and shipping affect all facets of operations through a trickle-down effect that begins with the customer.

Due to the prevalence of internet-savvy shoppers, a simple and honest picking or packing mistake can become a rainmaker profit loss if the customer affected by the mistake is an online influencer with a large following –and that is just one example. There is no large marketing budget or company culture on earth that can fend off the internet trolls, so ensuring that your businesses’ picking and packing procedures are air-tight before a customer makes an order is a top priority.

How to Reduce Mistakes During Picking and Packing Product Orders

Reducing or eliminating errors in the picking and packing process begins with evaluating your internal processes, and finishes off with tweaking the company culture. A regular review of the factors mentioned here are best made on a regular basis, as waiting until a disaster happens already means your brand has suffered a significant negative business impact.

  1. Understand the Dollars and Cents

While soft costs and damage to your company’s brand and reputation is a touch more difficult to pinpoint, any warehousing manager can quickly identify the cost of a mis-pick and understand that even a .03% increase in accuracy will rapidly add up to a large sum of money. Making these tangible numbers clear to warehouse pick packer staff is an important first step to staying on course.

When all warehouse staff members are aware of the accuracy of the numbers, they will work harder to ensure orders are picked and packed properly.

  1. Share Individual or Group Error Rates

Sharing the error rates of warehousing staff on an individual or group basis is yet another way to shine a light on problem areas in an effort to correct them.

Everybody makes an error at some point, and showing who the stronger staff members are will help others to carefully choose key members of staff to help them brush up on their training. Everybody wants to do right by their employer, and sharing this information will help its audience bloom.

  1. Share Staff Throughput Reporting

Job satisfaction traditionally rises when people feel they are the best at what they do, and a little competition for the title enriches enthusiasm between staff while of course, encouraging accuracy and speed during the pick and pack process.

  1. Weigh Orders

Weighing a majority of your pick and pack orders will also ensure accuracy while removing some of the burden from order quality assurance staff. This allows order weight verification software to meticulously monitor order accuracy and thus creating an extra layer of order accuracy protection.

  1. Automate, Automate, Automate

Making it easier for humans to pick and pack orders come in an array of flavours. Many errors can be avoided through the use of an automated document printer and inserter system, slotting inventory for easier access, and digitally displaying products on-screen in an automated fashion can help warehouse staff improve accuracy and speed during the pick and pack process.

In Conclusion

These suggestions are only the tip of the iceberg, however they are often the meat and potatoes when it comes to improving accuracy and efficiency during the product pick and pack process.

Do you have anything to add to this list? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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