A warehouse operation increased picking speed from 17 to 150 items per hour over three to four years by optimizing product placement and shelving. They cut the workforce to one-third its original size while the return on investment far exceeded expectations.
One of the things I want to mention too is when we started this, when we were first picking in the warehouse before we started our journey, we were picking at a rate of 17 items an hour. An item is one item on an order, okay? One item on order, we're picking at 17 an hour. Today we're picking at over 150, and we have one-third the pickers that we had from 3 or 4 years ago. And it's because we optimized the right product in the right location, in the right shelving, with the right— Rules. I mean, it wasn't hard. It was just a little bit of work. And once we did that and accounting and finance saw it, they're like, go, go, go do it. Go do whatever you want. Go, go spend a lot of time out there. It wasn't hard, but the numbers were staggering. Every time we tried to put ROI on something, it far exceeded what we expected. Just unbelievable.
