Comments on: Anatomy of an Efficient Process – How We Pack Orders

By: New Warehouse Layout, Inventory Zones, & Efficiency | Adam McFarland

New Warehouse Layout, Inventory Zones, & Efficiency | Adam McFarland — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:58:35 +0000

[...] the most frequently sold brands closest to our pulling table (this post from last year has a good overview of how we pull/pack [...]

By: Adam McFarland

Adam McFarland — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:22:12 +0000

Thanks for the link Rob

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:26:48 +0000

Saw this and thought of you…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7770338.stm

By: Adam McFarland

Adam McFarland — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:30:06 +0000

Hi Gordon -

Thanks for the comment. Not exactly sure what you’re asking? We have the puller double check the order before the second person “officially” checks it. Are you asking what percentage are found to be wrong at that point? I’d say about 1%, although we aren’t tracking that currently.

We obviously do track how many get shipped out wrong, and that number is very low. I checked the spreadsheet and we’ve had 20 in six months, which is far far less than 1% of orders. Assuming that number stays essentially zero we probably won’t start tracking anything more than what we currently do.

Happy Thanksgiving!

By: Gordon

Gordon — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:22:03 +0000

Roughly what percentage of orders are wrong on the first go-through? (is it worth it to have someone checking?)

By: Adam McFarland

Adam McFarland — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:42:30 +0000

Thanks Phil. It’s actually been interesting to track the accuracy. We made a few adjustments yesterday because it was consistently picking ~25% of the boxes a little bit too small. Obviously our formula doesn’t take into account how each item is going to be placed into the package. Total volume would assume you had a clay ball of that total volume and could mold it however you wish, which isn’t the case with products of finite dimensions. After quite a bit of banter back and forth, we decided the simplest way would to just add a percentage to the volume so that many close orders would get kicked up a box size. We started with 10% today and had 100% accuracy, although orders were a bit slow since everyone is waiting for Black Friday sales. We’ll see next week for sure, but we are working in the right direction.

By: Feedback Secrets

Feedback Secrets — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:43:06 +0000

I was impressed by your “box-size system”. The algo you designed is simple and seems efficient. I can see how it could save you guys tons of time.