Warehouse Pick Path Optimisation: are your Pickers taking the scenic route?
A quarter of your operating cost is people walking, not picking
Not intentionally, obviously. It’s not their fault — they’re just doing what they’re being asked to do. But right now, for every hour that your team is spending on the warehouse floor, roughly half of the time you are paying them for is spent travelling. Your staff is spending that time walking between locations. Covering ground. Getting from A to B, and then B to C, and then back to A again, because that’s what your WMS is telling them to do.
Statistically speaking, order picking accounts for around 55% of total warehouse operating costs. It’s a significant chunk of your budget. And approximately half of that cost is pure travel time.
Which means that almost a quarter of your entire operating cost is dedicated to people walking around, not picking anything.
It’s a big number to absorb. So, here’s another one: 15–30%.
That’s the picking productivity improvement that Optioryx users have seen since deploying its AI optimisation layer on top of their existing WMS. They haven’t had to hire more people. They haven’t had to replace their systems. They’ve just used Optioryx to make the pick paths they already had significantly smarter.
We’ve been watching Optioryx for a while. And we were so impressed with what it could offer Dispatcher WMS users that at IntraLogisteX last week, we announced a formal technology partnership with them. Which means that if you’re a Blue Yonder Dispatcher WMS user, you can now access the Optioryx AI optimisation layer through us.
What warehouse pick path optimisation actually looks like in practice
Optioryx Pulse sits on top of your Dispatcher WMS and communicates via API. It takes over the routing and clustering decisions that your WMS is currently handling. Standard WMS pick path logic is adaptable, but typically fairly static. Most warehouses have fixed snake routes, use simple wave planning, and live by rules that were probably configured at go-live and most likely haven’t been touched since. Possibly those rules were put in place by someone who has long since left, and possibly they left for a good reason.
Pulse replaces that routing with algorithms that take into account your actual warehouse layout, your actual aisle directionality, and your actual order profile — right now, rather than what was going on three years ago.
The results from Optioryx users speak for themselves:
25% faster order picking
50% less walking and driving time
20% lower labour costs
30% higher fill rates
The algorithms run in real time, and they keep learning from your operation — so performance improves continuously rather than reaching a plateau.
What about the labour shortage problem?
Around 37% of logistics companies are still seeing significant staff shortages. Average annual turnover in warehousing sits at around 36%. And high churn costs much more than recruitment fees. It costs you the endless cycle of working with people who haven’t figured out where all the workarounds are yet. Your staff turnover problem creates performance dips, increased errors, and everybody tends to assume it’s an unavoidable people problem.
But usually, it isn’t. It’s a process problem. A pick path problem, specifically. Which is a much more solvable thing.
When Optioryx is handling your warehouse pick path optimisation, the effectiveness gap between your newest hire and your most experienced picker narrows considerably. Because the system is doing the on-the-fly, difficult thinking. Your people follow optimised instructions and pick more, faster — regardless of how long they’ve been on the job.
Pair that with User Services Portal (USP) and Mobile from USP, and those instructions reach the right person on the right device — without anyone needing to hike back to a terminal in the back office to find out what they should be doing next.
Nothing needs replacing
Your Dispatcher WMS stays exactly where it is. Optioryx connects to it. Your team keeps working the way they work. They just stop going the long way around to do it.
This is WMS pick path optimisation that works with what you already have — not a replacement project, not a rip-and-replace exercise. Optioryx adds the intelligence layer on top. Dispatcher provides the foundation. And the gap between what your operation costs today and what it could cost closes considerably.
If any of this sounds like your operation, it’s probably worth a chat. The solution is simple and fast to implement.
Want to see what your pick paths could look like? Get in touch with the Socius24 team — we’ll walk you through it.
