Picklists for Efficient Order Fulfillment

For organizations with large warehouses and high volumes of orders being processed every day, making a trip to pick products for each order independently can be an inefficient and time-consuming effort. To help optimize this process, DWA Commerce offers Picklists - a report that displays the list of products that need to be picked from various locations in the warehouse.

How Picklists Work

When you create a picklist, the system goes through all the open outstanding orders which can be shipped, excludes any order items which have already been picked, and groups the remaining items together for picking into bins. It then creates a numbered transport bin for each order. Next, using the Inventory Lot locations you have defined for your warehouse, it checks whether the products you need are in pick/primary locations in a warehouse or in the bulk storage area. If the item is in a picking or primary location, it records on the picklist the products which need to go into each numbered bin. If the item is in a bulk location, the system creates a Stock Move to transfer the item from bulk to the picking areas of the warehouse.

After a picklist has been created, you can merge bins or transfer bins to another picklist when you have specific reasons for editing the lists. Then, you can print the picklist report, which orders all the items in the list according to their respective locations in the warehouse (when the locations have been configured) and shows the items to be collected into each bin of your picklist. When you have finished picking the picklist, you can set it to closed.

Picklists Step-by-Step

Processing orders for shipment begins with finding the orders which are ready to ship according to the instructions in the respective orders. The orders that are ready are defined as follows:

• Orders which are Approved, and
• Which have at least one item in stock if the items can be shipped separately, or
• Which have all the items are in stock if the items are to be shipped together.

Getting Started

The Ready To Ship Shortcut Button provides two functions for getting started with the shipping process:

1. This screen displays a "Ready List" of orders which are Ready To Ship out, but have no Picklist prepared (yet). Thus, the screen will not show orders which are already on a picklist. This screen is automatically refreshed to show all new orders as they are Approved,and their status changes to Ready To Ship.
2. To create a Picklist for a selected order, click on the "Picklist" link on the Ready List line item.

Creating Picklists

After you have selected the orders to be shipped, you can create a Picklist for them using the Create Picklist Shortcut Button. This screen is used to generate Picklists for orders ready to ship. To facilitate packing orders for shipments of a particular type, it lists the number of ready orders by a shipment type. You can select the shipment type to be picked and the maximum number of orders to pick in each Picklist. The system will then generate the pick lists, which you can view in the Open Picklists Screen.

Viewing and Editing Picklists

The Open Picklists Shortcut Button displays a list of the Picklists which are currently open for processing (picking), the Picklist ID, the Picklist date, the number of orders on the list, current status of the list and the shipping method for the orders on this list. From this screen, you can:

• Click on the "PDF" link on the Open Picklist line item to print the Picklist and a Packing Slip for each order.
• Click on the Order ID/Shipgroup ID link for any entry in the displayed list to see specifics and to edit the picklist. It shows the numbered Bin of each order, the Order_ID/Shipgroup_ID and a PO number.
• Click on the Order ID/ShipGroup link to see the list of products to be picked for that order. Click the link again to remove the product details.
• Click on the "Delete" link on the product detail line to remove an item from the picklist.
• In the "Move To" column you can enter an alternate Bin number, or an alternate Picklist to move the Order to a different Picklist, Click on the "Move" link to complete moving the Order Bin to the alternate list.
• Click on the "PDF" link to print the Picklist and a Packing Slip for each order bin.
• Finally, to update the status of your picklist, select the new "Status" from the drop-down box, and click on the "Update" button.

Note: When you change this Picklist status to "Picked", this picklist will move from the Open Picklists screen to the Closed Picklists screen.

Closing Picklists

When a Picklist is closed, it is no longer available for picking. To close a Picklist, you can follow these steps:

1. Go to the Open Picklists Screen.
2. Find the Picklist you want to close.
3. Click on the "Close" link on the Picklist line item.
4. Enter any notes regarding the Picklist closure.
5. Click on the "Update" button.

Conclusion

Picklists can help optimize the process of picking products from a warehouse by grouping items to be shipped from multiple orders and consolidating them into a single list. This can save time, reduce errors, and increase efficiency in the order fulfillment process. With DWA Commerce's Picklists, you can easily create, edit, and close picklists, and generate reports to help streamline your warehouse operations.