Meaning & use
order picking
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountablebusiness
The process of collecting the goods in a warehouse that match a customer's order so they can be packed and shipped.
Grammar: Used without an article: order picking takes up most of the warehouse time.
Patterns
- order picking in a warehouse
- order picking system
Order picking is the slowest and most costly step in many warehouses.
The company bought robots to speed up order picking.
Accurate order picking keeps customers from receiving wrong items.
Common combinations
- order picking system
- The order picking system tells workers which shelf to visit next.
- automate order picking
- They plan to automate order picking with small robots.
- order picking errors
- Barcode scanners helped reduce order picking errors.
- speed up order picking
- A new layout will speed up order picking.
- batch order picking
- Batch order picking handles several orders in one trip.
Synonyms and how they differ
- picking
- Picking is the shorter form often used inside the warehouse, while order picking makes clear it is for customer orders.
- fulfillment
- Fulfillment covers the whole process from receiving an order to delivery, while order picking is just the collecting step.
- retrieval
- Retrieval is a more general word for fetching items, and does not specifically involve customer orders.
Opposites
Word family
- order picker noun
- a person or machine that picks orders
- pick verb
- to choose or collect
- picking list noun
- a list of items to collect for an order
- order noun
- a request for goods
Commonly confused: order picking or order taking?
order picking vs order taking
Order taking means recording what a customer wants, while order picking means collecting the goods.
Practice
In a warehouse, ___ is the step where workers collect the items listed on a customer's order.
Choose one answer.
Order picking is collecting goods to fill orders. Order taking is receiving the order, and the others are different tasks.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “order picking”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.