A wave is an aggregation of picks across zones and orders that are consolidated to optimize pick and prioritize shipment. Wave planning is very effective in high volume pick or pack environments as it optimizes the labor costs. For low volume pick and pack warehouses (stores, stockrooms or low volume of orders), support customer pick-up or for one-off shipments (urgent orders), it may be more effective to release shipments individually rather than group into waves.
The demand at a wave level for a shipment is grouped and is further broken into the method of pick to be employed using Pick Strategy, and where to pick the inventory using Pick Location Assignment. Containerization process is also applied, if necessary, considering customer and SKU specific constraints.
It is important in a warehouse to manage the total work issued on the system at any given time. The allows control over the number of waves picked in parallel at a shipment group level. For example, a warehouse having 5 pre-defined shipment groups can ensure that each shipment group releases and picks only one wave by setting the values to 1 at a shipment group level.