This work presents a real case study to improve the performance of order picking in an existing
company warehouse. The main objective is the reduction of the overall picking time. The work is divided
into three stages. The first stage is to register the situation in the warehouse with regard to the required
order picking times. The total time is divided into travel, search, retrieval and return time to allow a more
detailed analysis of the situation. The analysis of the obtained data identifies promising modifications and
quantifies the benefits of adopting them. In effect, the measurements indicated the need for more
systematic management, storage and arrangement of the products in the warehouse, and more efficient
routing. After the company approved and implemented (some of) the proposed modifications, the time
measurements were repeated to see the benefits. Finally, a mean 50% reduction in the total picking times
was achieved. There is still space for improvement, even given the reluctance of the company to carry out
expensive modifications. Our future research considers the development of a simple warehouse simulation
tool to apply different arrangement options and evaluate their performance, using the time data collected
in this work.