BuySeasons tripled Halloween picking speed by mixing voice, scans and lights

BuySeasons had a classic seasonal e-commerce problem: Halloween created a huge temporary labor surge, many orders had only one or a few items, and voice-picking batches sent workers across too much of the warehouse.

SupplyChainBrain reported that BuySeasons replaced its legacy voice-picking setup with 40 FastFetch batch-picking carts. The new system combined voice, barcode scanning and light-directed placement, while optimization assigned orders to carts and found cluster picks at shared locations.

The measured jump was stark. Average picking across all workers, including inexperienced temporary staff, rose from 38 items an hour to 132 items an hour, nearly 3.5 times the old rate, in a 380,000-square-foot New Berlin, Wisconsin facility.

The trick was not full automation. It was a better human-machine division: the algorithm chose the walk, the lights showed the tote, and scans kept the order accurate.

Batch the walk, light the slot

The carts let one trip serve many orders, which fit a peak with many small e-commerce baskets.

Light-directed placement reduced training burden for temporary workers who could not memorize locations or exception rules.

Barcode checks preserved accuracy while the optimizer increased batch complexity.

Warehouse labor can speed up when software removes travel and decision load at the same time. The interface matters as much as the optimizer.

FastFetch said the BuySeasons project replaced 100 voice-picking headsets with 40 multimodal carts, more than tripled order-picking speed, lifted worker productivity 64%, and let the company ship 43% more orders with 12% less labor during the last peak season. CSCMP listed BuySeasons/FastFetch as a 2018 Supply Chain Innovation Award finalist.