Calculating the True Cost of a Mispick

Most order fulfillment operations utilizing operators to manually select required products to fill a customer order have experienced picking errors. That’s because humans are prone to making mistakes.

Picking involves much more than grabbing an item off a static storage rack or shelf. In the typical manual distribution center, picking means an operator receives a paper list of instructions about what to pick and where, travels to the correct storage location, locates the correct item within that storage location, refers to the paper pick list to determine the number of items required from that pick face, picks the items, confirms the pick by marking the paper, then delivers the items for picking.

All of those steps are fraught with potential error. So, while most operations understand mistakes will happen, very few have taken the time to calculate the true cost of those mispicks, and how they impact the bottom line.

This white paper outlines a calculation for estimating the true cost of mispicks in order fulfillment to an operation. It also presents technology solutions to improve pick accuracy, and shares a calculation for determining the savings they can deliver.