Batch picking

Instead of walking the aisles once for every order, one picker collects the items for several orders in a single round, then sorts them into their orders, either on the way round or afterwards. The more orders that contain the same few items, the more walking this saves. That way of working is called batch picking.

Sorting happens either at the shelf, into separate boxes on a trolley, or afterwards at a sorting point. Both add a step, so batch picking pays off for lots of small orders with overlapping items, and much less for large or very varied orders.

Not to be confused with a batch number, which tells deliveries of a product apart. Here 'batch' simply means a group of orders picked together.