Fulfilment centres: a building organised around the single-item order

The order profile is the design brief

Before any layout is drawn, the profile has to be understood: how many lines a typical order contains, how many units sit on a line, how concentrated demand is across the range, and how that shape shifts through the trading year. A population dominated by single-line orders rewards a compact fast-pick area and direct pack; a population with several lines per order rewards batching and a consolidation step. Designing without the profile produces a building that handles the average order well and the actual orders badly.

Pick faces built for hands rather than forks

Consumer picking is a manual activity carried out at reachable heights from small containers, so the fast-moving range is presented in shelving, flow racking or totes rather than on pallets. Reserve stock still lives on pallets somewhere above or behind, feeding those faces through replenishment. The split creates a permanent internal task nobody sees on an order: keeping the faces full without over-committing space to lines that turn slowly.

Packing turns into a production step

In a case-picking depot, packaging is largely inherited from the supplier. Here it is decided per order: which carton or bag, how much protection, what paperwork goes inside and which label goes outside. That makes the pack bench a genuine workstation with a cycle time, a materials supply and a quality standard, and it makes carton range a live cost decision, since oversized packaging is paid for twice in materials and in carriage.

Returns arrive as a second inbound stream

Consumer channels generate a flow of goods coming back, arriving in ones and twos, unpredictably, and in unknown condition. It needs its own receiving discipline, its own grading rules and a decision path for resale, refurbishment or disposal. Sites that treat returns as an overflow task and park them near goods-in tend to lose both the space and the recoverable value.

Peak is a labour and handover problem

Trading peaks rarely break the storage; they break the human stages and the departure schedule. Recruiting, inducting and training a temporary crew takes weeks of preparation, and the carrier handover window will not stretch simply because more orders exist. The realistic levers are earlier wave release, more pack positions, extended shift cover and pre-agreed collection changes rather than emergency capacity elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions

Can an existing depot simply bolt consumer orders onto its current operation?

It can start that way, but the two missions compete for the same people and doors while wanting opposite things from layout. Once volume becomes material, most operators separate them into a dedicated zone, a dedicated shift or a dedicated building.

What usually limits throughput once picking has been optimised?

Packing positions and the handover to carriers. Picking can be scaled by adding pickers to a large floor; pack benches occupy fixed points with fixed services, and vehicles present themselves on a schedule that the site does not control.