Pick bins: 9 considerations before choosing your solution

Maybe you are start-up e-commerce business thinking about how you are going to manage your order picking and packing.

Maybe you are warehouse manager, tasked with improving the efficiency of your team of order/part pickers.

Perhaps you are a logistics manager fed up with the pressure placed on you by the need to get orders shipped instantly due to slow picking times.

You might even work in sales, marketing or web development and be frustrated that you are not able to offer shorter lead times to your web visitors and/or potential customers.

In all of these scenarios, using pick bins could help with the difficulties you are experiencing.

So although you have identified picking bins as a means to improve your order fulfilment, part retrieval, customer lead times and picking processes in general, where do you begin?

Moulded or Correx® (or even cardboard)? Custom picking bins or stock sizes? Should they be stackable? How durable do they need to be? Can my budget stretch to a specific type?

All of these are important questions.

Picking, shelf and parts bins can vary massively in terms of not only there cost and performance but in terms of their manufacture and how easily they can be integrated into your operations.

This is why it is important to analyse the factors – and requirements – that could affect the success of implementing pick bins or updating your current solution.

But what are these factors?

If you consider the following 9 points when specifying and purchasing your order picking bins, you should end up with a suitable solution for your specific requirements.

• Stock turnover
• Environment
• Size/weight of products
• Size of inventory
• Value of product
• Fragility of products
• Availability of space
• Regulations and industry sector
• Budget

The rest of this guide covers these points, in turn, allowing you to ascertain the best type of picking bin for your specific application.

The amount of orders you fulfil – and therefore your stock turnover – can have a significant impact on the type of pick bin you should be using.

There are 2 schools of thought on this. The first is that, if you are turning over high volumes of products, the chances are you will be handling the bins a lot. This will cause them to wear out quickly, meaning that the cheapest possible bins (usually the cardboard K Bin type) should be used, as they will be cheaper to replace.

The other argument is that although they cost more upfront, plastic bins (either moulded or Correx®) will provide a longer-term solution. They will, in effect, not wear out so quickly, so their lifetime costs will actually be lower than cardboard k-bins for example.

So whilst Correx® picking bins are arguably the best compromise in this situation (being cost-effective and durable), you must also consider the protection required for your slower moving lines.

If you have products which do not sell in high volumes, they may be sat in storage for a prolonged period of time. As such, this means they will require more protection from dust, temperature changes (which may cause condensation) and moisture.

In this scenario, your pick bins should probably be plastic, to make sure you are not writing off large amounts of stock that have become unsellable during its time in storage.

The size and weight of your products also influences the material choice for your picking bins.

If your products are fairly lightweight, then cardboard picking bins will most likely be suitable (although this in itself depends on the corrugated board grade type that is used).

However, heavier duty or weighty products would potentially lead to rips or tears in cardboard picking bins, and at best they would be quite difficult to handle.

Moulded plastic euro bins, on the other hand, would offer more than enough strength to alleviate this problem, but as they are only available in stock sizes, they may not necessarily be a suitable size for your products (although they should fit your racking).

The compromise – and best overall option – is Correx® bins. They can be designed to take the same weight as moulded bins, but as well as being more cost effective can also be manufactured to the specific size(s) demanded by your product range.

When thinking of the fragility of your product inventory, you should also consider its value as well.

There is arguably little point in over-specifying your bins to protect low-value products (think party supplies, cleaning products, stationary etc.), but if your items are expensive (computer hardware or software, specialist components, high-end fashion etc.) then the cost of replacing or writing off items damaged in storage is usually in excess of the extra you would have spent on quality picking bins.

The thought process should be exactly the same as with the fragility of your products. How much protection does your inventory need (including from handling and storage in the environment in which they are stored), and choose accordingly.

The amount of products you hold in stock at any one time can influence the types of pick bin you use.

If you have a vast, sprawling array of product lines then it simply might not be cost-effective to kit out your warehouse with expensive moulded plastic bins.

However, you should also consider that, if using corrugated cardboard, you will likely have the need to replace them more frequently – making them cheaper in the short term but more expensive in the long term.

If you can, using plastic bins in the first place will be more cost effective. But, this may not fit within your company’s budget, and using cardboard picking bins is definitely better than not using picking bins at all.

As mentioned above, the budget available to purchase your picking bins will influence the solution you can realistically expect to settle on.

Corrugated cardboard bins such as K bins are the cheapest, but will most likely need replacing more frequently (driving up the long-term costs).

At the other end of the scale, moulded plastic bins offer exceptional longevity, but do incur a hefty upfront cost (although, longer term, this can work out more cost effective than constantly replacing cardboard).

Arguably the best compromise – as ever – is Correx®. Correx® offers much-improved durability and lifespan over corrugated cardboard but is considerably cheaper than moulded plastic bins. Whilst not lasting quite as long as moulded bins (but not far off – and offering equivalent performance), they are the best combination of reasonable upfront costs and long-term cost effectiveness.

The amount – and type – of space you have available can also be a factor in your decision.

This can be particularly important if you experience peaks and troughs in terms of orders (and therefore picking and packing), and need to adjust your order picking and storage capacity accordingly.

For example, if you have periods where you do not need to store or process as many orders, Correx® bins offer the opportunity to be collapsed and stored flat – freeing up space for other activities such as increased production.

Whilst corrugated bins offer this but struggle to cope with being assembled/collapsed too many times, whereas moulded bins will always take up a considerable amount of space (although this is arguably not an issue if they are in constant use).

Besides this, many plastic (both Correx® and moulded) bins are free standing and can be stacked. This means they can be used without racking (i.e. if you have under-utilised floor space), which is something that cardboard cannot really offer.

Finally, your industry sector, and any regulations applying to your products, should also be considered.

For example, some of your products may need to be kept sterile, which something that cannot be so easily achieved with cardboard (Correx® and moulded plastic, however, can both be used for cleanroom applications and medical sectors).

Fibres from cardboard may also contaminate your products, and cardboard cannot be easily cleaned, unlike plastic bins.

The counterpoint is that, if your company is particularly environmentally focused, then cardboard is considerably easier to recycle than plastics (although this is of course still possible).