Piece & Carton Picking
Picking is where warehouse costs concentrate. The movement of people through aisles, the time spent locating items, the errors that generate returns — these frictions accumulate into significant cost at volume. How a picking operation is designed determines not just its speed, but how it holds up under pressure: at peak, during staff shortages, and as order profiles shift over time.
The right approach depends on the operation. Order volumes, SKU count, unit size, and the mix between single-item, multi-line, and carton picks all point toward different solutions. SPAN works through these parameters before recommending anything, since the picking method chosen shapes everything downstream — storage layout, conveyor routing, software requirements, and staffing levels.
Solutions span manual, assisted, and fully automated picking: goods-to-person systems, put-to-light and pick-to-light, voice-directed picking, and robotic piece-picking for high-throughput environments. These can be deployed independently or combined within a single operation, and integrated with warehouse management and execution software for full visibility from order release to dispatch.
