What Is The Process Of Pick and Pack Fulfillment Service And How To Choose It?

Pick-and-pack is a form of value-added service that is an integral part of supply chain management. As a result, finding an effective pick-and-pack fulfillment service can lead to numerous benefits in efficiency and effectiveness within any shipping or supply operation. Here are the most important things to keep in mind when choosing which company to outsource your pick-and-pack fulfillment services to.

Pick and pack methods for the fulfillment process

Here are some of the options a fulfillment warehouse might use for order picking. The items may be on a pallet or in a bin, or some other kind of shelving system.

Piece picking: As the order comes in, a picker picks up each item by hand to complete the order. The picker has a list of items which may have them walking throughout the entire fulfillment warehouse for that one order. This is not the most efficient method, but it’s the simplest.

Zone picking: Pickers are assigned to one area of the warehouse for the fulfillment process. They stay in that area to pick up orders sent to that area. Sometimes orders involve multiple areas of the warehouse. With the zone picking method, the order is then sent to another area, sometimes on conveyor belts or using robots. This is efficient for the pickers as they don’t spend as much time traveling through the warehouse.

Wave picking: Using both batch picking and zone picking, pickers still stay in one zone, but pick items for multiple orders at once, a batch approach. This can be more cost-effective than piece picking. 

Batch picking: The picker will gather all items for assigned orders in batches, rather than when they come in one-by-one. This is more efficient than piece picking, as several orders may need items from the same pallet or shelf. There is also more for the picker to pay attention to, and it can decrease order accuracy. 

Choosing a Pick and Pack Fulfillment Service

Here’s your problem now: there are many different pick and pack services to choose from.

To save you some time, here’s our checklist for choosing a pick and pack service that actually works for your business. When evaluating services, consider these:

Provided Services

First and foremost, you need to see what all services they provide. At the minimal, they should provide basic pick, pack, and shipping capabilities. That’s why you’re using them.

Depending on your business needs, however, you might need more.

Do you need to ship different items together in a certain way? Do food items needs to be stored in a warehouse with a certain temperature? Does the service process returns for you, too?

If you ship internationally, you’ll need to make sure that the provider handles international orders.

Define what your specific needs are and see how each fulfillment provider meets those needs.

Shipping Guarantee

When researching different pick and packs services, see what their guarantee is for shipping.

Some promise to always ship the same day the order came in. Some vendors even take it a step further and promise to pay for the package, if they ship any later than that.

Also, see what shipping services they provide like 1-day, 2-day, rushed, expedited, etc. These are important offerings to your customers.

You want a shipping service that you can rely on to ship your packages in a timely manner. You can always look to customer feedback to see if the provider ships on time.

Single and Multichannel Fulfillment

Consider what channels your orders will be coming from. Do you just need to fulfill orders from your own site? Or, do you have several channels such as a webstore, Amazon, eBay, and even in-store that you need to process orders for?

Ask how the pick and pack service will handle all different types of orders. The pick and pack service will need to handle the order format of your different channels.

Looking for a pick and pack fulfillment service provider?

Angetion provides one-stop ordering fulfillment solutions, including product procurement, quality inspection, warehousing, pick-up packaging and global transportation from China to the world. It focuses on providing services to crowdfunding event owners, Amazon, eBay sellers, Shopify store owners and other platform store owners, making one-stop logistics simple, efficient and economical. If you have any need, please do not hesitate to contact us.