This blog completes the ‘Take a Walk with Me’, discuss which invites you to virtually walk through each functional area of the warehouse with a focus on identifying improvements. These improvements might include reducing travel distances, decreasing material handling labor, improving accuracy, increasing storage capacity, adding locations, and enhancing safety. Despite differences in people, products, and systems, most facilities share core functions: receiving, stocking, storage, inventory management, order picking, packing, and shipping.
The previous blogs in this series covered Receiving, Stocking, Order Picking, and Replenishment. Now, we conclude the tour with Pack & Ship. The complexity in the packing area has increased over the years with more e-commerce volumes, value-added services and advancements in technology.
Based on the 2025 WERC DC Measures report there isn’t a specific metric for pack and ship, but the #1 metric is On-time Shipments. And, while every function in the distribution center impacts this metric, success is often measured in the last 100 feet of the distribution operation – Pack & Ship.
Pack
The pack method is directly impacted by the order pick approach – mostly, if orders are picked directly into the shipping carton, or if orders are picked into totes. If orders are discretely picked into the shipping carton, then the packing process is easy. This process is often automated, with the shipping cartons moving through semi-automated dunnage equipment, automated case sealers and print & apply equipment.
The traditional pack area involves workstations and handling totes from carts, pallets or conveyors. The workstation is equipment with corrugated boxes, tapers, printers, labels, a scanner, and a computer. Walk through your packing area and observe how much movement is required by the packing operator to obtain the products (totes), corrugate boxes and other materials required to complete an order.
The packing process is often the final quality check before shipping, especially in a manual picking environment. The process includes scanning and counting items at the pack station, while packing into the shipping carton.
A well-designed packing station has products and packing materials available within reach and with good ergonomics. In higher volume operations, it is common to have downstream semi-automated dunnage equipment (i.e. paper, air bags) and print & apply (PANDA) equipment. And, it is becoming more common to have case making equipment to pre-make common box sizes, and/or make boxes on demand with labels. If your pack area becomes a bottleneck, it is time to consider these various technologies to enhance your packaging process. To summarize,
- Ergonomic pack station
- Ergonomic standing pads
- Auto Box Makers
- Auto Baggers
- Auto Document Inserters
- Auto Case Sealers
- Auto Print & Apply (PANDA)
Shipping
Shipping is tied directly to the picking and packing process. The shipping function may include full truck loads, less than full truck loads, parcel shipping and/or will call orders (pick up). It is common to have all these methods involved in the shipping process.
Much like the receiving area, ideally you have the space required to layout the required areas and not use the storage area for staging. As you walk through the shipping area, make sure you don’t see shipping pallets staged in the aisles!
The shipping process includes WMS functionality to guide the operator to retrieve pallets from specific staging lanes, scanning staging lane barcodes, pallet IDs and the correct loading door. If handling loose case pallets, then most pallets are stretch wrapped on the dock using stretch wrapping machines. The shipping doors are equipped to provide easy access and safety including the following:
- Dock Lights, Signage and Bumpers: Installed to direct driver to proper dock door and prevent building and trailer damage.
- Wheel Chocks and Restraints: Chocks placed under wheels and trailer restrained to prevent trailer movement
- Dock Levelers: Automated/semi-automated dock levelers are used for unloading trailers with forklifts versus the need to manually place dock plates.
- Dock Fans & Lighting: Placement of adequate trailer lighting and fans to increase productivity.
Closing
As you might imagine, the goal for shipping on time is essentially 100%. The 2025 WERC DC Measures reports on time shipping for best in class operations at >= 99.5%. Make sure the pack and shipping processes are not the bottleneck to achieving these objectives.
Take a walk through your pack and shipping process and identify potential areas of improvement leveraging the information shared in this blog. Validate and/or document standard operating processes, review WMS capabilities, estimate current labor standards, and collect related data to evaluate identified improvements. Determine the impact of the identified improvements and any related capital costs. Then, build the business case for change. If you need support with any of these tasks, please consider St Onge Company.
—Norm Saenz, St. Onge Company
