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The time I insisted on alphabetizing every item on the warehouse shelves for six months
My lead hand finally told me I was wasting hours and making it harder for everyone to find things by location instead of name, so I tried sorting by pick frequency instead and it cut my bin restock time by almost half.
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caleb_stone13d ago
I actually read about this in a warehouse operations study a few years back. It said that alphabetizing works great for small setups but falls apart fast when you have more than a few hundred items because people naturally think by location, not name. I remember the key stat was that pickers spend about 40% of their time walking and looking, not grabbing. So when you sort by frequency, you're cutting down that walking time by a LOT. Your combo idea with bay numbers and alphabetizing could work if you use a simple number system like aisle-shelf-row. But for speed, nothing beats having your top movers right at the front where you can reach them without thinking.
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faithwalker13d ago
Wait, wouldn't alphabetizing still work if you also kept track of bay numbers or locations? I feel like a combo of both could have saved you some time upfront.
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loganthompson13d ago
Jot down the bay number on a sticky note, congrats you just reinvented the wheel.
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