Ok let me go through and list the process we currently use for picking material.

1.) The process is triggered when a pick ticket is created by the office.  Before this can be done two main criteria must be met.  First, the material must be on an open customer purchase order that is entered into the system by the order takers.  The second criteria is that the material must be in stock.  Material can either already be in inventory or it can be put into stock when it is received in by the warehouse.  Once these two criteria are met a pick ticket is created by one of our office employees and put into a basket to go out into the warehouse.  The warehouse employees then periodically come into the office and check to see if there are any pick tickets ready to be picked.  If so they bring them to the warehouse and pick the material.

2.) As far as the actual material picking process goes basically it can be done by any of the warehouse workers.  They are all trained the same way and all have the same job when it comes to picking the material.  What they will do is first get the pick ticket from the office.  They will then bring the ticket to the warehouse and stamp it.  The stamp contains an outline for their initials, the manager's initials, date, number of packages and weight.  They then pick the material from stock.  The in stock material can come from one of two places.  If the material was already in inventory before the order was created it will have an inventory bin location.  In that case the bin location will be listed on the pick ticket and the warehouse worker will go to that bin location and pick the material.  If the material recently was received in because it was not in stock and therefore was ordered specificially to fill this particular order it will be located in on one of the receiving shelves.  The receiving shelves have their own separate bin numbers.  When items are received in by the warehouse they put them on one of these receiving shelves and note that shelf on the vendor's packing list.  Then when our pick ticket is created by the office they reference this receiving shelf on the pick ticket.  The warehouse staff will then use this information to find the material on the recieiving shelves and pick it.

After all the material on the pick ticket is taken from stock it is put on the shipping bench along with the pick ticket itself.  The ticket is then initialed by the warehouse employee who picked the material.  It then waits there until a manager is able to double check that all the material is there and correct.  If it is correct the manager will then initial the pick ticket as well.  If it is not correct the manager will instruct the warehouse worker to go back and get the correct material. 

Once the ticket is initialed by both parties it is ready to be packed up.  The warehouse worker will then pack the material using the boxes and packing material we have on hand.  After it is packed the box is weighed and the weight, date and number of packages is noted on the packing slip.  Lastly, the customer name and pick ticket number are both written on a sticker and put on the box to go out.  That box is then brought over to the staging area and is ready to be shipped out. 

3.) I understand the importance of verifying this with the workers themselves but because I do that on a daily basis (I am one of the managers who approves outgoing material and therefore I interact with and was involved in creating this process with the warehouse) for this exercise I won't go through the process of asking them if you don't mind.  However, like I said, I can definatly see the value in going through processes with employees if the situation was different.

I see and agree with your point 100%.  I see workers taking short cuts and "improving upon" processes here every day and it is completely true that although sometimes these are faster than the original process, the worker doesn't always see how the number of errors can be increased with the short cut.  I will certainly keep that in mind from now on. 

I am going to get to work on that Process Flow Diagram.  I'm sure I can find info on BMPN or UML notations on this site and I'll use that as a guideline.  Unfortunatly I don't have access to Microsoft Visio so I will have to sketch it and then scan the diagram.