What is a line in warehouse picking?

A line, or order line, is one SKU on a pick list regardless of quantity. Picking 5 units of one product is one line; picking three different products is three lines. Lines per hour is the standard productivity benchmark because it isolates handling effort from order size.

What is a good lines-per-hour rate?

It varies widely by method. Manual piece-pick from shelving often runs 40 to 80 lines per hour, pick-to-cart 80 to 150, and pick-to-light or voice can exceed 200. Use your own historical data as the benchmark rather than a generic figure.

How is cost per line calculated?

Cost per line is the hourly labour cost divided by lines per hour. If a picker earns 18 per hour and completes 90 lines per hour, each line costs 0.20 to pick. This is the metric to track when justifying automation or slotting changes.

Why include travel time separately?

Travel between pick locations is typically the largest single component of pick time, often 50 percent or more in manual operations. Splitting it out shows how much a slotting or zone change could save, since better slotting cuts travel without touching the pick or pack steps.

What shift length should I enter?

Enter productive hours, not paid hours. Subtract breaks, briefings, and known idle time from the paid shift. An 8-hour paid shift often yields 6.5 to 7 productive hours, and using the gross figure overstates picks per shift.

Warehouse Pick Rate Calculator

Lines per hour is the universal yardstick for order-picking productivity. This calculator breaks each line down into travel, pick, and pack time, then rolls it up into an hourly rate, a per-shift throughput, and the labour cost of picking a single line — the numbers you need to benchmark, staff, and justify changes.

How it works

The total handling time for one order line is the sum of the three sub-steps:

line time (s)   = travel + pick + pack
lines per hour  = 3600 / line time
picks per shift = lines per hour × productive shift hours
cost per line   = hourly labour cost / lines per hour

Travel time is the walk or drive between pick locations and is usually the dominant component in manual operations. Pick time is the grasp-and-confirm at the face, and pack time is any consolidation into the tote or carton attributed to that line.

Example and tips

With 18 seconds of travel, 6 seconds to pick, and 4 seconds to pack, each line takes 28 seconds, giving 3600 / 28 ≈ 129 lines per hour. Over a 6.5-hour productive shift that is about 836 picks. At a fully-loaded wage of 18 per hour, each line costs 18 / 129 ≈ 0.14 to pick. Notice travel is 18 of the 28 seconds — cutting it with better slotting would lift the rate far more than speeding up the pick itself.