Implementing a “Bucket Brigade” style of picking when possible is therefore one of the easiest ways for a company to save money.

What is “Bucket Brigade”?

I’ve found the easiest way to explain it is by asking you to think about ordering a submarine sandwich at a Subway. The first person in the brigade asks what sandwich you want and the type of bread you want it on. They do not stop there (usually). They cut the bread and begin assembling the sandwich until the second person is bumped down to take over asking which toppings/condiments you would like. At that point the first person starts over with the next customer in line.

Why is this better than each person assembling from start to finish? Why not have people assigned only certain tasks on every sandwich?

The answer is in the word ORGANIZATION.

A “Bucket Brigade” style adds efficiency to the system by keeping people sequentially ordered and always working. You are not waiting for the person next to you to finish putting extra mayo on a sandwich while your customer wants jalapenos on the other side of that person. You are also not waiting because five customers in a row wanted extra bacon and the person in charge of that task is suddenly overwhelmed. The rules of Bucket Brigades lend structure to the system without a word even spoken.

Many Order Picking applications inside of a warehouse have proven “fertile soil” to implementing the structure of Bucket Brigades. Efficiencies have been noted to increase from 10 to 40 percent. Even order accuracy has been documented to increase because the straight-line methodology keeps totes/boxes ordered instead of cluttered.

Bucket Brigades in a forward Pick Zones works as follows:
The first worker begins by starting a batch of orders and completing picks until he/she is bumped off the batch by the second person. The second person is handed off the batch by the first person and starts completing where that person left off. The first person then proceeds to start a new batch of orders. The second person can be bumped down by the third person, and the third by the fourth, etc…

The workers should be organized from the slowest pick rate in the first position to the fastest “all-star” picker. This will lend to the “Six Sigma” principle that product is to be pulled through a system and not pushed through.

Under standard picking methods where workers pick orders all the way through, the workers will have to leap frog one another frequently. This can be time consuming if let’s say the worker’s batch of 12 totes are on roller conveyor and he/she must leapfrog all 12 of them past another’s totes on the line. You can see where this can cause inefficiency and even where totes might get mixed up causing picks being put into the wrong tote.

Bucket Brigade is a Zoneless method of picking. Zone picking eliminates Leap Frogging but is too rigid in that the if one picker has a large number of picks in his/her zone the person in the next zone ends up waiting for totes.

Even adding/subtracting workers to the system is done easily and without having to make adjustments to the software or explain to the group their newly adjusted responsibilities now that a person is being added. The system keeps flowing as normal.

Bucket Brigade picking can be utilized with several manual picking technologies. RF Bar Code Terminals, Pick-to-Voice, and Pick-To-Light all lend themselves to the use of bucket brigades to organize the picking process.