Pick Path Assessment
Your pick path is the single largest labor cost in the building. Most of it is invisible.
We analyze travel distance, slotting alignment, pick density, wave design, and replenishment readiness to find where time is being lost — and where pick shorts are a symptom of a configuration problem, not a picker problem.
Built for teams that know picking costs more than it should.
- Operations leaders who see pick rates vary between identical shifts and suspect the path, not the people, is the problem.
- Site directors whose slotting strategy hasn't been revisited since implementation and whose replenishment team runs constant emergency fills.
- Teams where pick shorts are persistent but no one has mapped them back to putaway, replenishment, or location accuracy.
- Leaders who want a focused diagnostic of outbound flow before committing to a slotting or WMS configuration project.
The friction this assessment is built to expose.
- Pick rates vary 15% or more between identical shifts with the same headcount.
- Replenishment runs emergency fills during active waves, forcing pickers to wait or skip.
- Fast-moving SKUs are slotted in the back of the pick path while slow movers sit at the face.
- Pick shorts concentrate in specific zones or SKUs but the root cause has never been traced upstream.
The report, in one view.
A focused diagnostic you can act on. Here is what lands on your desk, and the operational signals it is built around.
- Pick path efficiency score — travel distance vs. optimal, by zone and wave
- Slotting alignment audit — velocity class vs. pick face assignment
- Pick density heatmap — hits per foot of travel, zone by zone
- Replenishment readiness report — forward pick fill rate at wave release
- Pick short root cause classification — inventory vs. process vs. config
- Prioritized fixes by ROI, mapped to the right remediation service
- Travel distance·Actual path vs. optimal path by zone and wave
- Slotting alignment·Velocity-to-location match and pick-face assignments
- Pick density·Hits per foot of travel, by zone and shift
- Wave design·Release timing, batch logic, and cutoff alignment
- Replenishment·Forward pick location readiness at wave release
- Pick shorts·Frequency, concentration, and correlation to upstream events
Data required: pick history, location master, SKU master, pick short logs, replenishment logs. Most assessments take one to two weeks from data handoff to report delivery.
Every slowdown becomes a fix.
Slotting decay
Velocity classifications haven't been updated. Fast movers are in the back, slow movers at the pick face.
Replenishment timing
Forward pick locations aren't restocked before wave release. Pickers wait or skip.
Pick path routing
The WMS pick path sends associates through dead zones or against the natural flow of the building.
Wave design
Waves release without regard to labor capacity, carrier cutoffs, or zone congestion.
Location accuracy
Inventory says it's in A-12-3-1, but it was put away somewhere else. Pick short follows.
Putaway misdirection
Product consistently lands in the wrong location, creating pick shorts downstream.
Process workaround
The floor built a workaround that bypasses the pick path entirely.
Runs on the systems you already have.
Vendor-agnostic. The assessment runs against the WMS and master data your operation already generates, whatever platform it sits on.
Ready to find where your pick path is losing time?
Most assessments start with a 30-minute call to understand your outbound flow and confirm which data is available.