A picker waiting at bay 14
Mid-morning, a client's product goes viral on social media and orders flood in. By eleven the pick face for their bestseller is empty. Pickers arrive, find nothing, mark the pick short and move on. The orders fall into a hold status. The reach truck driver is doing a scheduled replenishment run elsewhere and does not know. Two full pallets of the product are sitting three levels above the empty pick face.
Eventually a supervisor notices the short picks piling up and radios the driver. By then dozens of orders have been disrupted and need re-releasing.
Why fixed replenishment rules fail
Most WMS replenishment is triggered when stock in a pick face falls below a minimum, or done in a batch at the start of the shift. Both assume demand is steady. In a multi-client 3PL, demand is lumpy: promotions, launches and marketplace spikes change what is needed hour by hour.
| Replenishment method | When it goes wrong |
|---|---|
| Minimum level trigger | Triggers too late when a large wave hits a small pick face |
| Start-of-shift run | Does not cover a spike during the day |
| Pickers report empty faces | Only after the pick has already failed |
| Reach truck works through tasks in date order | Urgent faces wait behind routine ones |
The information needed to prevent it already exists: the orders waiting to be released tell you exactly what will be picked next.
What empty faces cost
Pickers walking to empty locations and back. Orders going short, on hold and out again, sometimes missing the collection. Supervisors spending the shift firefighting. And extra handling when stock is pulled from reserve in a rush and put into the pick face untidily, which causes errors later.
Short picks also make stock accuracy look worse than it is, because each one tends to trigger a count or an investigation that turns out to be unnecessary.
Over a peak season, the lost picking time adds up to hours of agency labour spent walking, and it is invisible in the reports because it never shows up as a line anyone is charged for.
Demand-driven replenishment we build
- A read of orders waiting to be released and in progress from your WMS, by SKU and client.
- Pick face stock and reserve stock by location.
- A calculation of which pick faces will run short in the next wave or the next few hours, given the orders already known.
- Replenishment tasks created in priority order: faces that will empty first go first, with the reserve location to pull from.
- Tasks pushed to the reach truck driver's handheld through your WMS if it supports task creation, or to a simple task screen if not.
- A record of short picks and their causes, so pick face sizes and minimum levels can be adjusted for the products that keep running out.
The same data helps with slotting: products that are replenished many times a day may need a bigger pick face or a better location.
What the floor gets
Pick faces topped up before pickers need them. Reach truck drivers working through tasks in order of urgency. Fewer short picks, fewer held orders, and supervisors who can manage the shift instead of chasing empty bays.
Is this your warehouse at peak?
- Pickers regularly find empty faces with stock above them.
- Replenishment runs are done at the start of the shift.
- Short picks spike when a client runs a promotion.
- Reach truck drivers are radioed for urgent replenishments.
- Nobody reviews which pick faces run out most often.