I worked in a book distribution company for 3 months and got to know better how warehouse employees work, what their tasks are and how a picking warehouse is organised.
Layout of the warehouse
The warehouse could be divided into 3 zones.
- The first one was the truck loading or unloading area, where pallets full of boxes containing books were picked up and the packages were dispatched to the customers.
- The second area corresponded to the main part of the warehouse where the shelves where the different references (books and other articles) were located.
- Finally, the packing area where the books were packed and stacked on pallets.
Picking process
Inside the warehouse there were different jobs, the first being that of the forklift drivers who unloaded the pallets from the lorries full of books and placed them on the shelves.
At the same time, and since it was not a task they had to do constantly, but only from time to time, they were in charge of picking up the books needed for the orders.
To do this, they had a list of references that corresponded to all the orders, they went through the entire warehouse to collect the number of books requested by the customers and put them in shopping trolleys/baskets to later take them to the parking area.
The packing process consisted of two parts and to facilitate the work there was a wall of drawers separating one part from the other.
- On one side, one or two operators with a computer scanned the barcodes of the references and placed the items in the number of the drawer that appeared on the screen, as well as the delivery note sheet and the package label.
- On the other hand, several operators collected the boxes with the items, assembled the packages with their corresponding labels and delivery notes and stacked them on the pallets
Once the pallets were formed, they were strapped so that they could be distributed to stationery shops, schools and supermarkets (some of them do school campaigns).
This experience allowed me to learn about the picking process in a warehouse, as well as the advantages of having a computerised warehouse (to a certain extent) and the disadvantages of having several people duplicating tasks.
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 
Thank you, Javier, for sharing your experience, It was interesting to find out how warehouses are seen from employee’s point of view!