Beauty Industry Group (BIG), one of the leading distributors in hair extension products, had an issue with their inventory management process, and their shipping platform in particular. They would use an open window on their shipping computer to print a label. It would take roughly 15 seconds for a single label to print. With several orders piling up, that was a long 15seconds. It became clear that label printing was their main constraint. Picked orders couldn’t ship out quick enough and were constantly being backed up.

The business tried to improve the process by having computers at each packing station. After a picker would retrieve all of their picked items, they would go to the packing station and print a shipping label. Unfortunately, however, this process was slow and disconnected. With a WOS, a picking cart also acts as a packing station to provide versatility. The order would be marked as complete and a label would then print even before the picker gets to the packing station.

After adding a WOS that pre-calculated and pre-printed labels, BIG was able to eliminate their bottleneck problems and ship out double the amount of orders than before, using half as many workers.