Streamline Your Order Fulfillment: Organize
by Chelsea Camper | Last Updated December 30, 2015A couple weeks back while grocery shopping (after doing some research for this series) I realized just how similar grocery shopping and order fulfillment are; in fact, grocery shopping is a form of order fulfillment!
In this post we’ll look at how organizing your shopping list is just like getting your order fulfillment nice and organized.
Items on a list.
On the grocery shopping side of things you have your grocery list. It’s a single, simplified list of everything you need in the store for that trip. Crafted with care over several days (maybe even a week) it’s designed to get you just the right amount of food to last you til your next trip to the store without going over budget (a pay check is usually the prelude to the next trip to the store). Without this list youd be sure to forget at least one item or stray from your budget and grab a few not-so-necessary items.
When talking about grocery lists in order fulfillment we’re usually talking about pick slips or packing tickets. These are lists of items your customer has ordered that they are expecting to receive from you in a fast but accurate manner. Like the grocery list, simplifying your packing ticket to be printed all on one sheet instead of multiple sheets helps make things faster and easier. Having everything on one sheet will also help you avoid costly shipping errors.
Have Items in order.
Step one to making your grocery list is to get everything you need on one piece of paper. Step two to making your grocery list is having the items in a logical order so you’re not doubling back through the store and wasting your valuable time. If you need apples and carrots put the apples and carrots together then put them in a logical area of your list. If your grocery store of choice has fresh produce in the front of the store, place those items near the top of the list.
Same goes for order fulfillment; try to organize your packing list in a way that doesn’t have your pickers and packers running back and forth through your warehouse. If your warehouse has widgets ordered from left to right as: Red Widgets, Orange Widgets, Yellow Widgets, Green Widgets, Blue Widgets, Purple Widgets, then don’t have your packing list ordered for Red, then Blue, then Yellow widgets; order it Red, Yellow, then Blue.
Right things need to get to the right people.
You never want to get something from the store and don’t realize it’s the wrong item until you get home. If someone asks for “orange juice with pulp” and you bring home “orange juice with some pulp” it will come up in every conversation for the next two months. …Trust me. You can avoid all of that by keeping a detailed and well organized grocery list.
Just as you don’t want to agitate the people you’re living with by getting the wrong thing, you don’t want to agitate your customers by sending them the wrong items. Keep your customers happy and loyal by making sure each item they’re receiving is what they asked for. By keeping a single, organized packing list, you can help reduce shipping errors and increase customer satisfaction.
Carefully packing all items.
When you finally get to the finish line (check out line), you need to carefully place each item on the conveyer belt in groups of fragile, not-fragile, things that need to go straight to the fridge, things that need to go straight to the freezer, things that you need to keep in your secret candy stash, etc. so that the person bagging your groceries has an easier time of keeping the bread and eggs from being crushed under the meat and water bottles.
Similarly with order fulfillment, if you have large, heavy items and small, light items in the same order you might consider sending them in two different boxes so that the lighter items don’t get crushed. If multiple boxes isn’t an option, make sure that the heavier items are settled on the bottom with lighter items on top and that the box is clearly marked as to which end is UP. It might also be a good idea to add some extra padding in case the box gets turned upside down during transport.
All in all organized lists are a good way to go to help your business or personal life. By collating different grocery lists onto one sheet of paper you can save time by not having to look at three of four sheets of paper. Collating shipping forms works just as well for saving you time in your order fulfillment process.
What other things do you use organized lists for? How do you organize your order fulfillment?
Image: meddygarnet
