Collective picking is a warehouse logistics approach in which warehouse staff picks the items required for several sales orders at the same time while moving through the warehouse. With the help of a printed pick list that contains all required items and their warehouse locations, the warehouse employee proceeds on their route through the warehouse. After completion of the picking process, items are transported to a central location, such as a packing station, and assigned to their respective sales orders.
This method reduces the distances that need to be travelled in the warehouse as well as the number of required warehouse runs. Thus, efficiency is increased particularly for bigger sales order volumes or high numbers of very small items, since multiple sales orders are processed in one step.
Tip
To summarize: Collective picking means that a printed pick list is used to identify the warehouse locations for the items of several sales orders at once. The articles are collected in a warehouse run and then transported to the packing table, where they are ultimately assigned to their respective sales orders and packed for shipment.
-
Economy of time: Items for several sales orders are picked during one run through the warehouse. This reduces the number of routes required, especially in case of small products or high sales order volumes.
-
Warehouse knowledge of your employees: Collective picking is especially efficient if your employees have comprehensive knowledge of the warehouse structure and the products. Less time is required for finding items, which improves efficiency.
-
Long distances in the warehouse: This method is suitable for warehouses with longer routes, because warehouse locations are not visited separately for each order, but only once in each run.
Before using the collective picking process, you need to carry out a few settings in Xentral to set up the process and to add your desired individual settings. The necessary steps are described in the following.
Proceed as described below to carry out the settings necessary for using collective picking in the project whose orders you wish to process with this method.
-
Use the Smart Search to open the Projects module.
-
Open the project whose orders should be processed using collective picking.
-
Open the Settings tab.
-
Click on Logistics/Shipping.
-
In the Shipping process and picking section, carry out the following settings:
-
Picking process: Select the option Simple stock retrieval and scanning in the dispatch center if you wish to carry out a quality scan or to register serial numbers via scan before ultimately packing your products. If you do not require this additional step, select the option Simple stock retrieval without further process instead.
Note
Basically, you can decide for yourself which picking process suits your requirements best. However, the options Without stock retrieval and Logistics center (2-stage-picking) are not possible, since they do not allow for collective picking.
-
-
In the section Stage 1 (picking/order picking), activate the option Pick list. Also, use the Number of copies field to specify how many pick list copies should be printed.
-
Carry out the following settings in the Stage 2 (pack) at dispatch station section:
-
Delivery note: Activate the option Printer if you wish to print an additional copy of the delivery note at the packing station so that you can add this copy to the package.
Important
In this case, do not forget to select a Document printer level 2 (shipping) in the Shipping process and picking section.
-
-
Finally, click on Save.
After you have carried out the settings described above, you are ready to process your first sales orders using collective picking.
The required steps are explained in the following chapters.
The transfer to the dispatch center is the step in which you make sure that all sales orders are handed over to logistics and have received green light on all of its order status indicator symbols.
You can transfer these sales orders individually or in groups, manually or with the help of defined processes. Take a look at this article to learn more on the possibilities for handing over sales orders to the dispatch center.
Note
As soon as you have started the transfer to logistics, the selected orders are transferred to the Dispatch center in Xentral. During this transfer, sales orders are processed automatically in the system background. The orders are sorted into groups and pick lists are created. Afterwards, the sales orders are ready to be processed by the picking process.
To start the collective picking process in your warehouse, you need pick lists in physical form (printed out). The warehouse employees use these pick lists to move through the warehouse and collect the items from the storage locations indicated on the pick list.
Generally, Xentral automatically creates pick lists in the background as soon as you transfer sales orders to auto-shipping. You do not need to carry out additional settings for this process step.
Afterwards, there are two ways to access and print out pick lists in Xentral:
-
Manually printing pick lists: Use the Smart Search to open the Picking runs module. Here, you can find an overview of so-called picking runs which always consist of several sales orders whose products should be picked next. Use the Open filter to filter for picking runs that have not been started yet. Then, click on the PDF symbol to print the pick list for this run.
-
Automatically printing pick lists: You can automatically print pick lists using a printer of your choice as soon as sales orders have been transferred to auto-shipping.
To do so, activate the option Pick list in the Stage 1 (Picking/order picking) section of the project settings (Open project > Tab: Settings > Tab: Logistics/Shipping). Also, use the Number of copies field to specify how many pick list copies should be printed. In the Shipping process and picking section, select the desired Document printer level 1 (picking).
A typical pick list may look as follows:
As soon as the printed pick list is available, the warehouse staff can start the picking process.
The information on the pick list is used to visit one warehouse location after another and retrieving the required items from each of them. The items are temporarily stored in a picking container. As soon as all items on the pick list have been picked, they are transported to the packing station.
The packing process typically consists of several specific steps such as the combination of products at the packing table, packaging the products in cartons, adding filler material, closing the package and ultimately attaching the shipping labels.
Then, the tracking number is communicated to your customers and your shipping service provider picks up the packages.
Important
With collective picking, the packing process is carried out separately from the previous picking process.
-
Transfer your fully stocked picking container (this can be a cart, a palette or a box) including the picked items to the packing table for further processing.
-
In the Dispatch center module in Xentral, the delivery note barcode that is printed on the pick list is scanned. This way, the sales order that needs to be packed is directly opened and displayed.
-
Finally, an additional quality assurance scan or a serial number scan takes place, depending on the picking process that you have selected in the project settings. Depending on the project settings, you can also print receipts such as delivery notes or invoices, or send them via email.
-
Close the packages and attach the shipping label. Then, the tracking number is communicated to your customers and your shipping service provider picks up the packages.