The 25% Project

Picking productivity at Edgistify's Delhi hub had plateaued for six months. Management suspected a WMS configuration issue and wanted a system change. The problem was that no one had measured where time was actually being lost — the assumption was the software, but no one had watched the floor.

Don't touch the WMS until the data is clear. Spend 6 weeks on the floor mapping every picker's movement across full shifts before proposing any change. Ignore the pressure to produce a quick fix — a wrong fix would embed a bad process permanently.

Tracked picker routes across 30+ full shifts — motion paths, idle moments, data entry patterns, and batch assignment sequences. Found that 40% of pick time was lost to unoptimised batch groupings: pickers were crossing the same aisles 3–4 times per batch for items that could have been sequenced together. Redesigned the batching algorithm around zone proximity and aisle order. Retrained pickers on the new workflow. Rolled out in two weeks with no system downtime.

25% productivity gain per picker — 160 additional picks per picker per shift. Full ROI achieved in 90 days. The hub manager replicated the zone-proximity batching model across two other facilities within six months.