Image Enabling The Supply Chain

  This distribution center best practice is called the cross docking. Cross-docking is basically sending a product you are sending from one dock to another dock i.e. from the receiving dock to the outbound shipping dock directly without any intermediary processes.  Cross-docking makes it so much efficient because you don’t have to send it to the reserve and then again from reserve to the active location and then pick from the active location. In the cross-docking process the quantity needed is recognized after the case comes-in. Then recognizing that there is a need for this product with the required number of units, you will be directly sending it to the outbound dock.  In the outbound dock a label gets applied and then it goes to the retail store. It’s much more common in the retail world because in the retail world you are shipping it from a DC and they are shipping to all the retail stores that they are serving so it’s okay if they ship one or two units extra. As you ...

  This next best practice is about the  warehouse zone picking process . The way this works is if your picking involves going to multiple areas, multiple isles of bin locations, and you are picking from different bin locations. This process is about eliminating all the unnecessary walking, and of course we all know the more you pick, the more you can ship, the more you ship, the more you invoice, the more you can get paid. This results in more revenue for the company, more revenue for the distribution center and everyone is happy.  If you can eliminate the time that is spent by people on walking and instead have them pick all the time then that becomes efficient. If you have one long isle or multiple isles you could divide those isles into multiple zones. So what would happen is and typically this works well with a MHE (material handling equipment) wherein the box comes to the zone and the person stays in the zone all the time.  The zone could be a confined area wher...

  This best practice is known as  location sequencing . It means that when you are configuring your locations for picking purposes, replenishment, and for put-away purposes in the reserve area in the top level position. While doing this you would have picked the naming convention to streamline the picking. On top of it there is also the ability to configure something called as the location sequencing. It means that you do not want your pickers to the same location twice which is also known as zig-zagging.  Optimizing the picking process will make your picking operators to walk less. Unproductive labor such as unproductive walking due to skipping does not directly translate to picking. The more you pick the more you can ship, the more you ship the more you can invoice and the more you invoice, the more money you make.  It’s important to follow the location sequence as it makes everything optimum. I’ve seen in some WMS where while they are picking from the current loca...

  This warehouse best practice is called the directed putaway.  Putaway  is a process of moving the product after receiving at the receiving dock. The product gets received and either cases were built or the pallets were built and now these cases and pallets have to be put-away in their reserve location. The way it works is the product is moved from the receiving area to the reserve area in so many different ways.  The user will find the first open location and just stick the load there and that is called the suggested put-away, and this is not completely the user directed put-away. In the user-directed put-away, user just finds the hole and sticks the load there and it is a complete wrong way of putting the loads. It makes sense when the volume is so low, but in a high volume scenario you need to follow a systematic process directed put-away which makes a lot of sense because you could configure your rules, based on the segmentation of the products like consumer goo...

  This best practice is about applying the seal especially when it is a FTL’s shipment. FTL a full truck load container shipment trailer that’s going from point A to point B.  It’s important to apply the seal and the seal number, and take the picture of that seal number and upload it to  LoadProof  so in case if you are a recipient or if you are a shipper you can see the photograph. If you’re a recipient you can ask the person on the origin side and say “hey give me this photograph”, or if you’re shipping you can take the picture of the seal number and say “hey look at it we did everything, we locked this thing perfectly and we applied a seal and here is the know picture of the seal and there is a seal number on it.  This is very common in international shipments, in the international containers because it’s one big container going from point A to point B. You can do that and also this is something interesting that I’ve observed, if the shipment is coming from i...

This is another best practice that you could use to make sure that nobody stacks anything on top of your pallet. If you are shipping anything on top of your pallet, it may be a specific product or few pallets through a carrier, this often happens. When you ship something to your retailer and obviously the retailers have a large volume of products that they sell through their stores.  They pick up the products from their vendor as well, so what they do is they optimize using something called dynamic routing. They optimize that pickup and then they bid those transportation contracts to carriers and the carriers take the contracts and they follow a fashion in picking. They go to stop 1 pickup 2 to 3 pallets, and then go to stop 2, pick up 2 to 3 pallets and then go to stop 3, so like that they are picking up and they might come to you. If you have a really nice product and you are manufacturing that product and you are selling it through a retailer they will come to you and you got to...

This is another best practice that you can follow while you’re loading your products in the trailer container. It’s always important to do a great job loading and obviously your team did a great job picking the product, boxing the product, and then nicely stacking them in pallets. The pallets are then shrink-wrapped and ready to go.  It’s important to load them perfectly because while the truck or the trailer is going there are a lot of bumps on the road, there’s a lot of traffic and the truck could go steep uphill and steep downhill. I’ve driven so much in the Tennessee area, into the mountains and all kinds of things happen. When all these happen there are G forces that act on the merchandise that you’ve shipped which could shake the product and also tilt the product sometimes.  If you have expensive  SKUs , these unnecessary shakes can still create damages. Even though the truck or the trailer might have the best shock absorber it’s not a good thing as your product mig...