Wave picking or waving is a WMS capability that groups orders by various criteria in order to increase picking productivity in the warehouse. It is especially advantageous for warehouses with a wide selection of SKUs that must fulfill a large number of daily orders. For such operations, fulfilling orders one at a time as they come in is a time-consuming process. Sometimes severe congestion occurs when multiple pickers require access to the same area in order for each to pick his or her particular order.
This kind of congestion happens when separate pickers individually fulfill orders that have a high degree of SKU overlap. This problem is solved by grouping the orders together and releasing them as a batch of work or “wave” to the pickers where they are assigned different SKUs in different parts of the warehouse. This coordination of pickers allows multiple orders to be fulfilled at once with minimal legwork and congestion.
Orders can also be grouped according to times of shipment or by the method of shipment such as by freight truck or by parcel service. Order grouping can be based on a trucking route or by product attributes or on consolidating the multiple orders of a single customer. When criteria that has nothing to do with the length of the pick path dictates the order grouping, the path can still be minimised as much as possible by properly sequencing the SKU pick order of each picker.
Waves often involve multiple pickers working in parallel. This speeds up the process when a wave requires the picking of SKUs that are widely dispersed throughout the warehouse. Multiple pickers can work these different locations simultaneously. A wave usually lasts between 45 minutes to 2 hours.
Wave picking isn’t appropriate for all types of operations. For example, businesses that do same day shipping can’t make use of waving if their daily order volume is low. There simply isn’t enough time for orders to accumulate to the point where they can be grouped and shipped on the same day. Waving is just one of the many capabilities of a warehouse management system. To learn more about how they can improve your warehouse operations, please contact us.
