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Warehouses and production facilities with marginal performing order pickers are doomed to fail. An order picking staff must have excellence as they review incoming material or product orders, find those materials and products on the shelves and deliver them to the loading area to be wrapped and put on a delivery truck. Their role may also include more responsibility of wrapping and loading the trucks.

When a stock picker pulls inventory from warehouse shelving to fill a custom order, he or she can do it inefficiently – or efficiently. Here are 10 ways an awesome stock picker eliminates wasted steps:

1. Good pickers work with picking methods efficiently

As a forward-thinking manager at a warehouse, a distribution center, or in a manufacturing plant, you know the importance of orchestrating, sustaining, and leading a state-of-the-art work environment for your team, your vendors, and your customers. You strive to create a system that is not only well-organized and highly-efficient, but also safe and waste-free. While there are lots of variables that contribute to creating such an operation, one integral factor directly contributing to the success (or demise) of your facility is the work ethic of your order pickers.

From A to Z, here’s a look at the order picker job description: the ideal qualities, characteristics, and skills of top-of-the-line order pickers:    

At the heart of a warehouse is the order picker who facilitates the transition of products in storage to move them on to eager buyers. Because they are at the very hub of the process, it is reasonable to say the order picker may be the most important person in a warehouse.

An expansive facility dedicated to shipping and receiving, warehousing, or order fulfillment and distribution continuously looks for ways to improve efficiency and productivity.  Positive improvements in these areas can start small and expand outward like ripples in a pond. 

For companies with warehouse operations at the core, dramatic improvements to efficiency and productivity of the workforce happen by adding portable printer carts.  When the carts include portable power supplies, the staff celebrates and productivity can improve 50%.

Rather than having lists, labels, order picks, and inventory data produced at a stationary printing location, the staff works while on the move which reduces unnecessary downtime eliminating wasted steps.

As you search for information beyond generic warehouse carts and narrow yit to order picking carts on the Internet, most will provide only one or two benefits in any detail.  To get the full scope of benefits, you will take more time to conduct searches, which is unnecessary and unproductive downtime.  

Unproductive downtime has been and remains a very real concern for companies that are involved in manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution operations.  You might be taking for granted one simple addition, order picking carts, which can translate into a variety of benefits and savings and dramatically improve the accuracy and efficiency of your warehouse.

One of your primary concerns may be the reduction of unnecessary downtime your company experiences on a daily basis.  This downtime may often go unnoticed, resulting in expenses and losses you are unable to account for or eliminate because you aren’t aware of the loss.  While hidden downtime can be costly to your company in many ways, did you know you can actually make changes to the workplace that will substantially reduce, if not entirely eliminate, this downtime altogether?

To understand how the warehouse operational performance can be improved, there needs to be an assessment relative to an achievable "standard" or "benchmark."  There are two pieces to this: Measurement/metrics and benchmarks.