28 Oct Top 25 Pick Rates: LightSpeed Customers Pick Over 200 Million Items in September

When deciding on which metrics to use for measuring your warehouse efficiency, Picks Per Hour (PPH) certainly ranks near the top of the list. But like any statistic or poll, you can use data to push any narrative you wish, sometimes providing a false sense of security that you are doing the right things operationally. At LightSpeed, we recommend that Picks Per Hour be just ONE of the key metrics used in measuring your warehouse operations.

Like Home Runs in baseball, Quarterback Ratings in football and Shooting percentage in basketball, Picks Per Hour is the sexy metric. It’s the number that everyone wants to talk about and the one number more likely to come up at an industry event. As such, we are excited share the top 25 pick rates for LightSpeed customers for the month of September.

The pick rates published here are determined by dividing the total number of pieces picked for the month of September by the total amount of time a customer was logged into LightSpeed. We measure two types of time – active and idle time. The two numbers added together make up Clock Time (or Total Time). Active time is the time calculated from the moment an employee pushes “start picking” to the time they print the tote ticket. All time outside of active, from the first timestamp of activity to the last is considered Idle time.

There are several things that we cannot see in measuring these pick rates. The biggest one is the number of employees being used to during active picking. Our pick to light solution, FastTrack, can only see time and pieces. We do not know how many employees are picking, how many are stocking, etc. A company with 10 people on their line is going to pick faster than a company with 3 people on their line.

Another data point that is not factored into these numbers is the size of the warehouse. The larger the warehouse, the more steps that must be taken to pick the orders, the more time it takes. For customers who use FastTrack and Mobile, this data point can be critical. The more space that is being walked to pick beverages will certainly slow down the overall pick rate. And Total Clock PPH uses both FastTrack AND Mobile combined to determine the rate.

Having stated the disclaimers, Total Clock PPH is the most accurate way to measure total warehouse efficiency in if you’re going to use one metric. It does combine active and idle time but there are legitimate reasons for idle time. Stocking shelves, emptying trash, breaking down cardboard, cleaning the bathroom, putting up an incoming vendor order and the list goes on. But once you have established a baseline, if you are looking for one key metric to track every month then Total Clock PPH is the one. With that, here are the top 25 LightSpeed customers for the month of September 2019.