Picking (Order Picking)

Picking (or order picking) is the logistics operation of locating, retrieving and gathering the items that make up each order from the various locations where they are stored, so they can then be consolidated, packed and shipped. It is the operational heart of any distribution center: it determines how quickly and how accurately an order leaves for the customer.

In practice, a worker (or an automated system) receives a pick list with the SKUs, quantities and locations, walks the warehouse following a route and collects each item until the order is complete. That is why picking accounts for 50% to 60% of a warehouse's operating costs according to industry benchmarks: it is the activity that consumes the most labor time and has the greatest impact on delivery errors.

Traceability for every picked item (which SKU, from which lot and expiration date, for which order) is part of what Trazzo records and organizes, connecting physical warehouse movement with order information.

Picking is, together with storage, one of the two operations that most define a warehouse's performance. While putting merchandise away is relatively simple, preparing it for outbound shipping demands accuracy, speed and traceability all at once, because every error passes straight through to the end customer: a missing item, a swapped product or a wrong quantity turns into a return, a complaint or a lost sale.

How picking works, step by step

The typical flow starts when an order enters the WMS (warehouse management system) and becomes a picking order. From there, the process usually follows these stages:

• List generation: the system groups the items in the order (or in several orders) and defines the locations to visit.
• Travel and collection: the worker follows a route optimized to minimize distance walked, which in a traditional warehouse can account for 50% of total time.
• Confirmation: each picked item is validated, ideally by scanning a barcode to avoid SKU, lot or quantity errors.
• Consolidation: items are gathered by order and move on to packing and shipping.

Why it matters to the business

Picking is the most common warehouse bottleneck because it is labor-intensive and highly repetitive. A 10% improvement in picking productivity usually has more impact on total logistics cost than optimizing almost any other stage. Its accuracy also feeds directly into key metrics such as OTIF and fill rate: you cannot deliver in full and on time if the order was prepared incorrectly. In e-commerce, where orders are numerous and small, picking efficiency determines whether the operation is profitable or not.

The most common picking methods

There is no single way to prepare orders: the choice depends on volume, the number of lines per order and product turnover. These are the most frequent methods in LATAM operations:

A concrete example

Consider a Consumer Goods distributor in Greater Buenos Aires that ships 800 orders a day to kiosks and neighborhood grocery stores. With order-by-order picking and paper lists, a worker took an average of 12 minutes per order and the warehouse accumulated a 2% error rate that came back as returns. After switching to batch picking with barcode scanning and WMS-guided routes, time was cut in half and errors fell below 0.3%. The change was not buying robots: it was reorganizing the method and digitizing confirmation.

Common mistakes when implementing picking

• Placing high-turnover products far from the shipping area, multiplying the distance walked.
• Relying on paper lists and manual confirmation, which hide errors until the customer complains.
• Not differentiating the method by order type (using the same flow for a 50-line order and a 1-line order).
• Ignoring traceability by lot and expiration date in categories such as food or pharma, where shipping an expired lot is a regulatory problem, not just an operational one.

How it differs from packing

Picking and packing are often confused because one follows the other, but they are different operations. Picking collects what the order calls for; packing packages and prepares that already-picked order so it travels safely. Good picking followed by careless packing still causes breakage and returns, and flawless packing cannot make up for picking that grabbed the wrong product. That is why many warehouses measure both stages separately and tackle picking first, since that is where cost and error risk are concentrated.