Before Peak Season: Test Your Picking and Packing Setup

Peak-season picking and packing depend on decisions about boxes, shipping-rate settings, pick routes, and where products are stored. As order volume rises, those decisions are repeated more often, making avoidable packaging use, unexpected rates, and extra picking travel more costly.

SolvingMaze helps teams use representative orders to test these decisions before changing a live operation. Its products cover packing and shipping rates, batch picking, and warehouse layout simulation.

Four checks before order volume rises

Start with the question most relevant to your operation:

• Packing: Will representative peak-season orders fit the boxes and packing rules you plan to use?
• Shipping rates: Are your package and carrier settings producing the expected rates for representative orders?
• Picking: Will proposed batches stay within cart limits, and could the pick routes require less walking?
• Warehouse layout: Could relocating frequently picked products reduce picking travel during peak season?

Choose representative orders

Start with a small set of historical orders that reflects the mix expected during peak season. Include differences in line counts, quantities, shared SKUs, storage locations, destinations, and packaging requirements.

When evaluating a particular change, compare it with a baseline while keeping the other inputs consistent where practical. Changing one decision at a time makes the difference easier to interpret.

Test packing recommendations and shipping rates

Use Pack and Quote with representative products and container choices. Before running the test, check the product dimensions, weights, packing rules, available containers, destination, and shipping services used in the calculation.

Cartonization uses the configured product and container information to recommend packages. Use the result to compare container choices, confirm that the configured packaging is available, and refine product dimensions or packing rules where needed.

When testing shipping rates, compare results from configured carrier services with the rates expected for the package and destination. If a shopping cart or another system presents the rate to a customer, also check that the integration passes the intended inputs and displays the returned result correctly.

Test the picking instructions and cart constraints

Batch Pick uses the configured layout, item locations, orders, and cart limits to produce batches and routes. Before running the test, check the order references, SKUs, quantities, shelf locations, barcode values, and cart-bin, weight, and volume limits.

Review whether proposed batches stay within the configured cart-bin, weight, and volume limits, and whether each picker task shows the intended location, product, quantity, and cart bin or shipping box. Compare optimized and unoptimized travel distance while keeping the orders and cart rules consistent.

Use layout simulation for a focused comparison

Warehouse Layout Simulation calculates a modeled route length from the layout, product locations, and orders you provide. Before running the comparison, check that recorded product locations match the current storage locations.

Keep the orders consistent when comparing the current arrangement with proposed locations for frequently picked products. Use the route-length results to estimate potential reductions in picking travel before moving inventory.

Understand what the results show

These checks can compare configured package and carrier-rate results, produce batches and routes within defined cart constraints, and compare modeled route lengths across layouts or product-location assignments. They are focused tests rather than a complete peak-readiness forecast.

SolvingMaze does not simulate staffing levels, processing capacity, or aisle congestion. Review those and other operational factors before making a production change.

Try the workflows in a Sandbox Warehouse

The free SolvingMaze Sandbox Warehouse is a limited test environment for trying Pack and Quote, Batch Pick, and Layout Simulation before choosing a paid monthly subscription. A newly created Sandbox includes guided examples and sample data, so you can see the main workflows without configuring a live operation. Usage and configuration limits apply and are displayed inside the Sandbox.

Create a free Sandbox Warehouse to try packing and quoting, batch picking, and layout simulation with sample data.

Considering an integration? Review the Pack and Quote API documentation or Batch Pick API documentation.