Picking and Packing for a Small Warehouse: A Simple System

In a small warehouse or godown, mistakes are rarely dramatic. A wrong size goes out. A pack is one item short. A box is heavier than the courier was told and the shipping charge goes up. Each costs a return, a refund or an unhappy buyer, and when you sell online, a poor rating as well.

Worked example. An online seller ships 80 orders a day. If 2% go out wrong, that is about 1.6 orders a day, or roughly 40 a month. If each wrong order costs ₹150 in return shipping and ₹60 in repacking and time, that is ₹8,400 a month. Halving the error rate is worth more than most discounts you could get from a supplier.

Almost all of those errors come from three places: not finding the right item, picking the wrong one, and not checking before the box is sealed. The steps below deal with each.

Pickers lose the most time looking. Give every shelf an address and every product a home. A three-part code works for most spaces: zone, rack, shelf. A-03-2 means zone A, rack 3, shelf 2.

The address only helps if it is written down against the product. If only the person who stacked it knows where it is, you have a memory system, not a warehouse.

Start with what you have. Printed labels and a marker are enough. You do not need new racks to begin.

• Label every rack and shelf clearly, at eye level.
• Put the fastest sellers closest to the packing table.
• Keep heavy items low and near the door.
• Keep look-alike items apart. Two sizes of the same shirt side by side is a mistake waiting to happen.
• Record the location against each product.

Picking is only as good as put-away. When goods arrive, they go to their recorded location, not to the nearest gap. If they must go somewhere new, update the location the same day.

For products with expiry, keep batches apart, and put the earliest expiry where it will be picked first. This is FEFO, first expiry first out. A picker who has to read the date on every pack will eventually stop reading.

For anything valuable, note when it was put away and by whom. When a location turns out to be wrong, you know who to ask.

A pick list tells the picker what to collect, how many, and from where. Sort it in the order the picker walks the aisles, not the order the items appear on the invoice. A list that jumps from A-01 to D-04 and back to A-02 doubles the walking.

Print or show the list with the location first, then the product, then the quantity. The picker reads the address, walks there, and only then needs to know what to take.

For a handful of orders, pick each order on its own. Once you have dozens of small orders a day, try batch picking. One picker collects the total of each item across many orders in one walk, and the items are sorted into orders at the packing table.

Worked example. Twelve orders between them need 18 black phone covers. Instead of twelve trips to rack B-02, the picker collects 18 in one trip and the packer splits them into the twelve boxes. The fewer trips, the fewer chances to grab the wrong colour.

The pack bench is the last chance to catch a mistake. Make the check a habit, not a judgement call.

Give each packer a clear table with nothing on it but the order in hand. Two open orders on one table is how items swap between boxes.

Worked example on weight. An order of three cotton t-shirts should weigh about 600 g packed. The scale shows 420 g. One shirt is missing. Catching it here costs a minute. Catching it from a complaint costs a second shipment and a return.

• Scan or read each item against the order before it goes in the box.
• Count multiples out loud.
• Weigh the finished parcel and compare it with the expected weight.
• For wholesale or truck loads, check the documents that travel with the goods, such as the invoice and any e-way bill.
• For groceries, check expiry dates on what goes in.
• Track packaging. Boxes, tape and bubble wrap are stock too, and running out on a busy day stops dispatch.

Instead of shutting down once a year to count everything, count a few locations every day. A small godown might count one rack a day and cover the whole space in a month. Start with the locations holding your most expensive or fastest-moving items. They cost the most when they are wrong.

When the count differs from the record, correct it and note the reason: a mis-pick, damage, or stock put in the wrong place. Over a few months, the reasons show you where the system is weak, and which step above needs tightening.

Okount's warehousing module supports several warehouses with zone, rack and shelf locations, put-away to a bin, and pick lists sorted by walking order that send people to the oldest expiry first. Pack bench rules for parcel, wholesale and quick commerce check each pack, packaging stock is used up as you pack, and cycle counts run by location. A phone camera can scan bins and products, so you do not need dedicated scanners.