Put walls have long been a staple within the four walls of a distribution centre, providing a simple and effective way to sort products into designated slots for later packing and shipment. Typically resembling shelving units divided into compartments sized for individual orders, they can also utilise totes as put locations. Whether fixed or mobile, put walls offer flexibility, with mobile configurations making it easy to scale capacity up or down as operational needs change.
They occupy a practical middle ground in warehouse design, delivering many of the coordination and batching benefits of automation without the capital intensity of systems like Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems or large-scale robotics. With minimal infrastructure requirements and a relatively small footprint, put walls provide a cost-effective way to enhance fulfillment performance. Unlike traditional sortation systems that are often built for peak demand but underutilised during steady-state operations, put walls can scale more fluidly—by adding labour or additional units—to align with real-world volume.
Where Put Walls Work Best
Put walls are particularly effective in environments where batching, flexibility, and scalable labour are more valuable than fixed automation. By enabling teams to pick multiple orders in a single pass and then sort them efficiently at the wall, they significantly reduce travel time, one of the largest drivers of labour cost, without requiring investment in technologies like Autonomous Mobile Robots.
They also serve as a practical alternative to conveyor-based sortation. While automated sortation systems offer speed, they often come with high costs and limited adaptability. Put walls achieve similar outcomes through guided processes such as light-directed placement or barcode confirmation, allowing for real-time order consolidation with far less infrastructure. This makes them not only more cost-effective, but also easier to adapt as order profiles and business requirements evolve.
Easily Build in Flexibility and Accuracy
This adaptability extends to how operations scale. Rather than relying on additional equipment, throughput can be increased by adding labour during peak periods or reconfiguring the wall to support different workflows. This approach is especially valuable in environments with seasonal demand swings, such as e-commerce and retail distribution, where flexibility is critical.
Put walls also integrate naturally with technologies like voice-directed picking and low-code workflow platforms, enabling more dynamic and orchestrated processes. Voice-directed picking can guide workers through optimised batch paths while systems dynamically assign put locations, creating efficient workflows without the complexity of more advanced orchestration platforms.
Accuracy is another area where put walls deliver strong value. Guided processes, whether through voice or barcode scanning, help reduce errors without the need for more expensive vision systems or robotic verification. At the same time, batching and intelligent sortation help offset some of the inefficiencies of a person-to-goods model by reducing travel per order.
We recently worked on a potential process change for a customer to make packing small items (like books) faster and more accurate by using a put wall. In the current process, pickers place items into totes, with some totes containing single-item orders and others holding multiple books for the same order, often grouped manually to keep them together through packing. The proposed approach replaces this manual grouping with a structured put wall process, where orders are sorted into clearly labelled cubbies arranged in a grid. Each cubby is assigned to a specific order and includes a short verification code, ensuring items are consistently placed in the correct location.
As totes arrive at the put wall, a worker scans the tote and then each item, with the system directing placement. If it’s the first item for an order, the worker assigns it to an open cubby; if the order is already in progress, the system routes the item to the same location. Once all items for an order are placed, a shipping label is automatically generated, and the order can be quickly retrieved and packed using simple verification steps. Single-item orders can be completed immediately, while full-tote orders can be processed with minimal scanning. Overall, this approach reduces manual handling, improves accuracy, and creates a more organised, scalable workflow that supports higher throughput with less reliance on manual sorting.
Equally important is the speed at which put walls can be deployed and adapted. Unlike large-scale automation projects that may take months or years to implement, put walls can be introduced quickly and adjusted over time as SKU mixes, order volumes, and fulfilment strategies evolve. This makes them well-suited for operations that need to remain agile in a rapidly changing environment.
Put walls tend to deliver the most value in high-volume, each-picking environments with smaller, easy-to-handle items and order profiles that benefit from batching. They are particularly well-suited for operations with fluctuating demand, allowing organisations to balance productivity gains with a more measured and lower-risk approach to automation investment.
The Strategic Takeaway
Put walls aren’t just a lower-cost alternative to automation, they are a deliberate strategy. By combining process design, batching, and guided labour, they can capture a significant share of automation’s productivity benefits at a fraction of the cost. In many operations, they serve as a bridge solution, enabling companies to defer large capital investments while still meeting performance goals.
They are especially effective in smaller-scale or hybrid environments, such as hyper-local fulfilment centres or B2B distribution operations adapting to direct-to-consumer demand. More broadly, put walls play a key role in modernising order assembly processes, helping organisations keep pace with rising expectations for speed and efficiency in e-commerce fulfilment.
Chandru Palaniyandi
As a senior software engineer for Lucas Systems, Chandru Palaniyandi optimises warehouse operations and transforms user experience by leveraging his commitment and knowledge in designing innovative solutions that help companies achieve their supply chain goals.
With more than 10 years of experience in the supply chain domain, Chandru started his career as a software engineer building a warehouse management solution for one of the world’s largest sports footwear and apparel brands. That experience has driven a unique ability and insight around warehouse optimisation through effective business processes, labour management, robotics and artificial intelligence.
Chandru earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Manufacturing Engineering from the Guindy College of Engineering and a Master’s degree in Business Information Management & Systems from La Trobe University.
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