The warehouse picker has a direct relationship with almost all the processes, thus learning a lot just by sitting along. The experience gained at entry-level will tremendously assist the individual’s career progression, no matter what department or occupation is eventually chosen. Besides, the company may not want to invest in teaching all the skills necessary if they can get someone who has already acquired them through work in the same or a similar firm.
Despite the necessity for proper planning and excellent organization skills, the job of warehouse pickers is still a very good way to get into logistics. The reason behind the latter statement is that the warehouse picker job is at the bottom of the supply chain, while at the same time, it is part of almost all supply chain processes. Employees in the picking position are getting the raw material.
for the next process, and they are the first to know when the product is not suitable for reprocessing. Observing the flow through all processes makes the pickers sharp at understanding the chain, and they know who the problem and solution are at any point in time. Eventually, it will be all done through hard work—picking the right thing in the right quantity at the right time and in the right manner.
Until very recently, picking in warehouses relied heavily on technology. Also, the main aspect that characterized the picking process was the accuracy up with some exceptions, of exercising the common practice. Thus, for human beings, it posed a challenge in terms of both the speed at which the devices operated and the accuracy levels. Today’s skilled pickers, on the other hand, can choose and pack up to 1,000 orders a day, which translates to more than half a ton of picked and packed items.
Most retail companies in India have already invested around 10% to 15% of their yearly revenue in logistics to make the purchasing experience easy and quick for the customer. Hence, they want to create a situation where the customer inquiring about a product gets it even without an order waiting. This way, the customer will always be informed about the status of their order, and, in the end, the positive experience will go even further than getting the parcel on time; hence, customers will wait a little bit longer and will not complain even if there is an inevitable delay.
Warehouse picker jobs are not very demanding among the tasks that they are supposed to do; this is one of the things that makes them so attractive. The only things that the workers will be doing are picking, packing, and sorting items. This does not require any extensive experience or education; therefore, even school dropouts can apply for the jobs.
In most cases, companies' hiring capabilities are limited when it comes to non-degree-holding individuals who might be very skilled and talented. The reason is that such candidates usually are not considered an option by default unless the company has been highly successful in eliminating people from the department. Certainly, it is quite hard to ignore the fact that the resume-less workers, who turn out to be the most affordable ones, will always suffer from the perception of being the least qualified.
Skills and competencies that are deemed essential by the owner of the warehouse may later on turn out to be the opposite, in fact. The thing is that the ability to pick the right item in the right quantity at the right time and in the right manner is the only skill considered by all warehouse operations processes. In fact, in the majority of cases, even these very few skills are not taught.
Over the years, it has been done through trial and error, and many companies currently use this method to teach the pickers where the best quality products are, and it involves a couple of days or even weeks of actually working and learning hands-on. One of the most common ways to filter out workers who are not suited for the picking job is to set productivity targets geared towards the average performance of the workforce, opening up workers' hurdles.
Companies do realize that employees can be a source of competitive advantage that leads to success when the right criteria are applied when hiring and a proper education and training system is established and executed.
However, despite these aspects of technology, the main driving force behind the demand for human labor in warehouses is the need for flexibility and quality, as pickers can better manage the latter than machines.
