For most warehouse-based businesses, dispatching is one of the biggest factors in terms of warehouse efficiency. Your dispatching system needs to arrange incoming orders in a meaningful way and then assign them to your pickers without causing traffic jams or letting anything fall through the cracks. With the help of a Warehouse Management System, dispatching can be highly automated and simplified.

Batching Orders Multiplies Your Productivity

Batching in this context is the term used to describe how your Warehouse Management System will group orders together when they are released into the warehouse for picking. This is different from the concept of "batch picking" where you pick to fill multiple orders at the same time. Batching orders in dispatch allows you to release the right work to the warehouse at the right rate. Higher priority orders can go first, and workers have enough work to handle without getting swamped.

You Can Run Simulations

While the Warehouse Management System can use logic to automatically batch orders, you will ultimately retain the ability to make changes on the fly. As part of this system, you have the ability to run any potential batch through a simulation to determine whether the batch will be better or worse for productivity. If you construct a batch that will force all of the activity in the warehouse into a single zone, it will be better to find that out in simulation than when people are running into each other in the aisles.

Prioritizing Orders Helps

There are several reasons you may need to expedite an order and move it to the front of the queue. Whether you have a special situation that takes precedence, or a customer paid for faster shipping, you have the ability to move their order up and batch it with other high-priority orders. You can also arrange your orders based on shipping deadlines for different carriers so that all of the orders that need to be on the UPS truck can be knocked out first, followed by the FedEx orders, etc.

Dispatching is Dynamic

With the help of a proper Warehouse Management System, you even have a truly dynamic dispatching system that improves your warehouse efficiency automatically. This means that your dispatching system is constantly refreshing itself, looking for new orders and working them into the line-up appropriately.

Without an advanced Warehouse Management System in place, most companies tend to release orders in ways that reduce warehouse efficiency. The introduction of WMS-based dispatching makes it possible to pick two to three times as many orders each shift. While you can have greater or lesser degrees of automation, you will always have perfect transparency into what is happening and the ability to step in to make changes if desired.