A Retailer’s Guide To Picking and Packing

Key Takeaways

Customer Satisfaction: Efficient picking and packing are essential for customer loyalty, as they directly impact delivery speed and order accuracy.
Manual Optimisation: Significant gains can be made by optimising your warehouse layout (using ABC analysis) and standardising processes for pickers and packers.
Technology is Key: A Warehouse Management System (WMS) is the most powerful tool for eliminating errors, automating tasks, and boosting productivity.
WMS Benefits: A good WMS (like Futura’s StockHub) provides intelligent pick paths, real-time stock visibility, and scanner-based verification to ensure near-perfect accuracy.

In today’s hyper-competitive retail landscape, customer expectations are at an all-time high. Next-day – or even same-day – delivery is no longer a luxury; it’s a baseline expectation. For a retail business, this puts immense pressure on one specific area of your operation: the warehouse. The crucial link between a customer’s click and the parcel on their doorstep is your fulfilment process, and at the centre of that process are two fundamental tasks: picking and packing.

These two processes are the most critical, hands-on stages in your entire warehouse operation. They are the last time your business physically interacts with a product before it reaches the customer. Get them right, and you build a reputation for speed, reliability, and accuracy. Get them wrong, and you face a cascade of costly problems: rising returns, negative reviews, and a permanent loss of customer loyalty.

In this guide, we’ll explore the fundamentals of pick and pack operations, offer practical, actionable strategies for improving efficiency, and introduce the technology-driven solutions that separate market leaders from the competition.

Understanding the Fundamentals: What are Picking and Packing?

Actionable Tips for Improving Warehouse Efficiency

What is a Warehouse Management System (WMS)?

Pack for Success with Futura

Picking and Packing: FAQs

What are Picking and Packing?

Before we can optimise, we first need to define: what is picking and packing? Though often grouped together, they’re actually two distinct processes that demand a different set of skills and strategies.

Picking

Warehouse picking is the process of retrieving products from their designated storage locations (bins, shelves, or pallets) to fulfil customer orders. This is often the most labour-intensive and time-consuming part of fulfilment, accounting for as much as 50-60% of all warehouse labour costs.

There are several common picking methods, and the right one for your operations will depend on your order volume, product variety, and warehouse size:

Piece Picking (or Discrete Picking): The simplest method. A picker takes one order sheet, walks the warehouse to find all items for that single order, and returns to the packing station. On the plus side, it’s incredibly simple to manage – but it can be highly inefficient, with a lot of repeated travel.
Batch Picking: A significant step up in efficiency. With batch picking, a picker retrieves items for multiple orders at the same time. For example, if five different orders all require the same product, the picker visits that location once and picks five units, sorting them into separate totes later.
Zone Picking: Here, the warehouse is divided into distinct zones, and pickers are assigned to a specific zone. They are responsible only for picking the items in their area. Orders are then passed from zone to zone (like an assembly line) or consolidated at a central point.
Wave Picking: A more advanced method that combines elements of batch and zone picking. Orders are grouped into “waves” (often based on shipping deadlines, courier, or destination) and released to the floor at specific times, helping to coordinate picking with the packing and dispatch schedule.

Packing

Packing is the process of preparing the picked items for safe and efficient shipment to the customer. This is far more than just “putting things in a box”. In fact, an effective packing process includes:

Verification: A final check to ensure the items are correct, undamaged, and match the order.
Packaging Selection: Choosing the right size box or mailer to minimise shipping costs (based on dimensional weight) and reduce the need for excessive void fill.
Product Protection: Using the appropriate materials (bubble wrap, air pillows, paper) to secure items and prevent damage in transit.
Labelling: Affixing the correct shipping label, along with any necessary customs forms, fragile stickers, or branding materials.

Efficiency and accuracy in both picking and packing are the cornerstones of a successful pick and pack warehouse. Every second saved and every error prevented translates directly into a healthier bottom line and a happier customer.

How to Improve Warehouse Efficiency

Before investing in complex technology, you can achieve significant gains by optimising what you already have. Efficiency is built on a foundation of smart layout, streamlined processes, and an empowered team.

Optimise Your Physical Space

Implement a Smart Layout: Your warehouse layout should follow a logical flow that minimises travel. Ideally, this flow moves in one direction: Receiving -> Put-Away -> Storage -> Warehouse Picking -> Packing -> Dispatch. This prevents bottlenecks and reduces backtracking. Ensure aisles are wide enough, clearly marked, and free of clutter.
Use ABC Analysis & Slotting: This is one of the most effective strategies you can implement. Analyse your sales data to categorise your products:
- A-Items: Your best-sellers (e.g., 20% of your SKUs that account for 80% of your sales).
- B-Items: Your mid-range, moderately popular items.
- C-Items: Your long-tail, slow-moving items.

Your ‘A’ items should be “slotted” in the most accessible, ergonomic locations (e.g., at waist height, closest to the packing stations) to drastically cut travel time for your pickers. Your ‘C’ items can be stored further away or higher up.

Streamline Your Processes

Create Ergonomic Packing Stations: A disorganised packing bench is a major bottleneck. A well-designed station should have everything within arm’s reach: multiple box sizes, tape guns, void fill dispensers, scanners, and label printers. This minimises movement and can easily shave 10-15 seconds off every single order.
Standardise Procedures (SOPs): Never rely on tribal knowledge. Create clear, documented Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for every task. How should an item be scanned? What’s the procedure for a fragile product? How is a multi-item order packed? SOPs ensure consistency, reduce errors, and make training new staff infinitely faster.

Empower Your Team

Invest in Thorough Training: Train your staff not just on the “how” (how to use the scanner) but on the “why” (why accuracy is more important than raw speed). When your team understands their direct impact on customer satisfaction and company costs, they become more engaged and meticulous.
Create Feedback Loops: Your team on the floor knows where the problems are. They know which bin is always hard to reach, which product is consistently mis-labelled, and where the workflow snags. Create a simple channel for them to suggest improvements – and crucially, act on their feedback.

What is a Warehouse Management System (WMS)?

A warehouse management system, or WMS, is the ‘brain’ that automates your warehouse. It creates smart pick paths, uses scanners to eliminate errors, and provides real-time stock visibility.

While manual optimisations remain a vital part of picking and packing, modern retail operations eventually hit a ceiling when relying solely on them. To truly scale and compete, you need technology. That’s where a Warehouse Management System (WMS) comes in.

A WMS is a software solution that digitises, automates, and optimises your entire warehouse operation, from the moment goods arrive to the second they are dispatched. It replaces paper-based pick lists, guesswork, and manual data entry with a single, intelligent, and real-time platform.

Here’s how a WMS, like StockHub from Futura, can elevate your picking and packing operations.

Smarter Picking with Intelligent Automation

Instead of just printing a list of orders, StockHub WMS uses intelligent order management and batch processing. The system analyses all open orders and automatically groups them to create the most efficient pick paths for your team. This moves your operation from simple piece picking to highly efficient, system-directed batch picking, dramatically reducing unnecessary walking and boosting your team’s pick rate.

Enhanced Accuracy Through Guided Workflows

Human error is the single biggest source of mis-picks. StockHub tackles this head-on with an app for Zebra Android handheld devices. This puts crucial item information directly on a rugged scanner in your picker’s hand. As a result, workflow becomes foolproof:

The WMS directs the picker to a specific location.
The picker scans the location bin to confirm they are in the right place.
The picker scans the product’s barcode.

If they scan the wrong item, the device alerts them immediately. This single function virtually eliminates picking errors, slashing your return rates and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Real-Time Stock Control and Visibility

How much time does your team waste searching for items the system says you have? A powerful WMS will provide a single source of truth for your inventory, offering complete visibility with:

Stock and Location Management: The system knows the exact location (down to the specific bin) of every single unit of stock.
Scan Goods In: As soon as stock arrives from a supplier, it’s scanned in. This makes it immediately visible to your EPOS and eCommerce platform, and available for picking.
Bin to Bin Transfers: If you move stock within the warehouse, a quick scan updates its location in real-time. Thanks to this robust stock control, your pickers are never sent on a fruitless search.

A Seamless, Traceable Workflow

A WMS effortlessly integrates every step, from pick to pack to dispatch, creating a seamless digital thread. An order is picked and scanned. It arrives at the packing bench, where it is scanned again to verify all items are present. Once packed, the system integrates with your couriers to generate the correct label. At all stages, you’ll have full traceability of where every order is in the process, from reception to dispatch.

Pack for Success with Futura

Optimising your picking and packing operations is not a one-time project; it’s a continuous process. It begins with a foundation of smart organisation and streamlined manual processes. But to truly thrive in the modern retail environment, it requires the power of complementary technology.

By embracing a WMS, you’ll transform your fulfilment process from a source of cost and error into an engine for growth, profitability, and outstanding customer satisfaction.

Contact Futura today to discover how StockHub WMS can transform your fulfilment process.

Picking and Packing: FAQs

What is the difference between picking and packing?

Picking is the process of retrieving items from warehouse locations to fulfil orders. Packing is the subsequent process of verifying those items, placing them in appropriate packaging, and preparing them for shipment.

What is a pick and pack warehouse?

A pick and pack warehouse is a facility (or a third-party service) dedicated to performing these two core functions. It’s especially common in ecommerce, where businesses store their inventory and have the facility handle all customer order fulfilment.

What is the most common warehouse picking method?

For small or new businesses, “piece picking” (one order at a time) is the most common due to its simplicity. However, “batch picking” (picking multiple orders at once) is widely seen as a more efficient method for scaling operations.

How can I reduce picking errors?

The most effective way is to implement a WMS with barcode scanners. This forces a digital verification of every item. Other methods include ensuring clear location and item labels, maintaining a tidy warehouse, and providing thorough staff training.

What is ABC analysis in a warehouse?

It’s an inventory categorisation method. ‘A’ items are your most popular, fast-moving products. ‘B’ items are mid-range, and ‘C’ items are slow-moving. This analysis is used for “slotting” – placing ‘A’ items in the most accessible locations to speed up picking.

How can a WMS improve the packing process?

A WMS improves packing by providing a final digital verification at the pack bench. The packer scans all items to confirm the order is complete before sealing the box. It also automatically prints the correct, service-specific shipping label, eliminating manual entry.

Why is pick and pack warehousing so important for ecommerce?

For an online-only business, the fulfilment process is the customer experience. The speed, accuracy, and quality of the picking and packing (e.g., did the right item arrive, was it on time, was it damaged?) directly determine if that customer will ever shop with you again.