Random item streams are sorted into shipping orders. Sort parameters depend on the type of company or application in the supply chain. For example, an outgoing sorter for postal or courier companies often sorts by route or zip code to gather all the items for a driver.

However, retail companies sort the items on the store. When looking at e-commerce orders, items can be sorted to order or, if the number of orders is very large, a combined batch of orders.

This last option requires a second sorting process to properly sort the items to order. This fine sorting could be done using light cabinets or another manual sorting system, such as sorting scanning.