Pick and Pack

Pick and pack is the core labor-intensive activity inside a fulfillment operation. Picking is the act of retrieving specific SKUs and quantities from their storage locations based on a customer order or shipping instruction. Packing follows immediately – the picked items are verified against the order, placed into shipping cartons or onto pallets, labeled, and moved to a staging area for carrier pickup. Together, these two steps consume the majority of warehouse labor hours and represent the biggest source of fulfillment errors when done without system guidance.

Picking methods vary by operation size and order profile. Discrete picking handles one order at a time – simple but slow. Batch picking groups multiple orders and picks them in a single pass through the warehouse. Zone picking assigns workers to specific areas, with orders passed between zones. Wave picking schedules pick batches to align with carrier departure times. The right method depends on order volume, SKU count, and how tightly the warehouse needs to synchronize pick completion with outbound dock schedules.

Pick and pack accuracy directly affects shipping quality. A mispick – wrong SKU, wrong quantity, or wrong lot – becomes a customer-facing error once the carrier departs. For food and beverage shippers, picking the wrong lot can mean shipping product with insufficient remaining shelf life, triggering retailer rejections or chargebacks. Packing errors – insufficient insulation for cold chain products, oversized cartons that increase dimensional weight charges – add cost that compounds across thousands of shipments.

While pick and pack is primarily a WMS function, its output directly feeds the TMS workflow. Accurate packing data – carton counts, weights, pallet configurations – enables the TMS to build optimal loads, generate accurate BOLs, and select the right carrier and service level. When packing data is wrong or missing, load planning starts on a flawed foundation.