Firstly, this website and its textbook make a pretty good primer: http://www.warehouse-science.com http://www.warehouse-science.com As far as efficiency best

Firstly, this website and its textbook make a pretty good primer: http://www.warehouse-science.com http://www.warehouse-science.com As far as efficiency best practices - I can offer some names of concepts to look into: - Picking Methods - Order picking, Multi-Order (Batch) Picking, Zone Picking, and Wave Picking. Each approach has their sweet spot regarding total # of orders and picks per order. - Cartonization - the system looks at an order/shipment and determines the best set of boxes to use ahead of time rather than letting the picker "eyeball" it and potentially have to re-pack into a different size (or waste a larger box and extra packing material). - Task Interleaving - which is basically about coordinating your warehouse workers to prevent them from moving around without doing some work (called dead heading). - Slotting - arranging goods in their most optimal locations. This is a complicated subject, but can be as easy as looking at historical orders to see what products are commonly combined and physically placing them near each other (to reduce picker travel time). As far as accuracy: - Pick-to-light systems are expensive, but tend to increase accuracy and efficiency. - Handhelds coupled with software that enforces scanning location and SKU barcodes (i.e. picker scans source location, source LP, enters quantity picked, and scans target LP). - Adding a weight verification step. Your WMS can come up with a theoretical weight of a given container based on what it thinks is in the container. You can throw a Mettler-Toledo PS60 scale inline on your conveyor that leads to your shipping station/dock/trucks and compare the calculated weight against the actual measured weight and double check if its too heavy or too light (within a tolerance). I'm the product manager for a Warehouse Management System - if you'd like to chat more, feel free to email me at my HN username @gmail.com, and I'll respond from my work email. I love talking to people in the industry - I always learn something new.