Each picking. Piece picking. Split-case picking. Whatever they call it, most companies find picking and shipping individual items hard to do cost effectively. Read our entire original article.

Staples—the world's largest office products company—is no exception. There, picking individual items to fill online and catalog orders is known as break-pack picking. And, according to Roger Will, vice president of transportation and logistics planning and engineering, it's a challenge.

“The break-pack pick module is the pinch-point in throughput in our DCs,” he says. Staples uses pick-to-light systems in a few of its break-pack operations, but most of the company's facilities, including the one in its 500,000 square foot Chambersburg, Pa., facility, are conventional pick-and-pass operations:

• paper lists direct picking in the facilities' pick modules, and
• conveyor lines carry away finished orders for shipping.

The Chambersburg facility is one of the best in the Staples network, says Will, but when it was time to expand the break-pack picking operation there last fall, Staples decided not to add more pick modules and conveyor.

Instead, the company installed a radically different fulfillment system in which robots bring inventory to order pickers.

Today, the robotic fulfillment system operates alongside the DC's original pick-and-pass operation. According to Will, the robotic system gets more than twice the throughput per picker than the conventional system.

“On the conveyor line, they were only picking part of the order,” says George Turano, manager of the Chambersburg facility. “Now they're doing the whole box.” This means order pickers never have to wait on someone else, and they feel more accountable for the quality of their work. One of the biggest benefits of the robotic system is the working environment for order pickers. The system is quieter than the conveyor system; it requires much less walking; and it gives order pickers more control over their work.