We average 1,100 orders/day with UPS at 4 p.m; after re-slotting A-movers and adding an 18-bin put wall, pick time dropped 9% but pack errors bumped 0.3%. Has anyone moved from wave to rolling batch to keep the speed without the error creep?
But we moved to rolling batches with a 10–12 min window and capped at about 50 lines; routing A‑movers through the wall with a ‘double-scan + weight check’ at pack kept the speed and cut errors about 0.2%. Caveat: throttle look‑alike SKUs or the wall turns into Tetris at 3:45. Do you have inline scales or just scan‑verify?
At about 1k/day we ditched big waves for 12–15 min micro-waves before the ‘4 p.m.’ push and set a hard pack WIP cap at 30; adding a forced bin-empty scan on the 18‑bin wall cut mis-packs about 0.5% without killing the 9% pick gain — , congestion was the real culprit. If you go rolling, still gate releases by pack WIP, not pick rate. Do you auto-pause drops when wall occupancy crosses 80%?
After 3:20 we shrink the 18‑bin wall to 12 active bins and shove overflow A‑movers to singles; kept rolling batches quick and dropped pack errors about 0.2% without risking the 4 p.m. UPS push. We also run a quick “bin‑clear on close” timer so nothing straddles the cutoff. @marcus_l89 have you tried throttling wall capacity instead of stretching windows?