How to reduce picking area by 50% and gain 30% in productivity
Case study — Avenue des Jeux, France Security & Pick Advanced
The more products a warehouse stockes, the larger the picking area becomes. The larger the picking area, the more meters the order pickers have to walk. And productivity plummets.
For sites managing tens of thousands of items with strong seasonality and constant renewal, static picking management quickly becomes a major obstacle.
Two sites took the problem from the opposite direction: instead of expanding, they drastically reduced their picking area by letting the WMS dynamically control everything.
The challenge: 80,000 product references, 40% renewal rate, 70% of the volume over 3 months
The Avenue des Jeux presents a context of rare complexity:
- 70,000 to 80,000 references to manage simultaneously
- A renewal rate of 30 to 40% each year — for many references, no history available
- : Extreme seasonality 70 to 80% of volumes concentrated between October and December, with a sharp increase between October and November.
- Orders placed on the same day (any order before 4pm ships the same day)require maximum responsiveness.
With such a wide range of referencing, the picking area expands and directly becomes the driver of preparation time: the larger the area, the greater the number of meters traveled per order.
The WMS response: dynamic coverage, rotation classes, and necessity picking
The WMS plays a central role by automating three complementary mechanisms:
- Dynamic stock coverage calculation : for each item, the WMS establishes in real time the sufficient coverage by picking, limiting the number of parts present to the bare minimum.
- Automatic simulation of reorder thresholds : low and high thresholds are continuously adjusted to control stock levels during picking.
- Rotation class update : reference locations are automatically repositioned based on their output frequency
In parallel, the WMS deploys two crucial complementary functions:
- Necessity picking : spot items (ordered for a specific customer or with very low stock levels) are only placed in the picking area based on orders received, close to the shipping point.
- cross-docking Anticipatory : during each delivery, the WMS identifies missing items in the picking process and addresses them directly, bypassing the reserve.
The impact: a picking slab cut in half
The combination of these three levers — dynamic cover management, necessity picking and direct replenishment from receiving — produced measurable results:
- discount Nearly 50% on picking trays at Avenue des Jeux
- increase A minimum 25-30% in productivity during preparation
- This effect is compounded during peak activity periods — when resource use is most critical
- Reducing the consumption of administrative resources to maintain the slab
For France Sécurité, the same approach made it possible to significantly reduce the preparation slab with a direct impact on preparation routes.
In a context of high seasonality and unpredictability, dynamic picking management by the WMS transforms space constraints into productivity levers. What was once a hindrance becomes a competitive advantage.