Image Enabling The Supply Chain

  INTRODUCTION This document describes the benefits of an effective chargeback management system. An effective chargeback management system helps with 1 – Eliminate or at the least significantly reduce the chargebacks, 2 – Provides visibility to the chargebacks. The visibility gained provides insight into the compliance mistakes made while the orders are fulfilled, so that the warehouse team can address those compliance mistakes one by one. BACKGROUND What are chargebacks? Chargebacks are fines that retailers impose on suppliers because the Retailers are doing extra work to process the Supplier’s product through the Retailer’s Supply Chain. Why are suppliers getting chargebacks? Because Supplier’s shipments are not fully in compliance with the requirements set by the retailers on how the shipments should be arriving at the Retailer’s distribution center. If a supplier is not fully following the compliance requirements, then that needs to be addressed first. So dedicate a person to ...

Executive Summary Manufacturers and Wholesalers distribute their products to their customers who in turn sell them to end consumers. Manufacturers and Wholesalers (will address them as Shippers in this document moving forward) invoice their customers at rates that were agreed previously. In many cases, however, the customer pays less than the invoiced amount, stating some reason for withholding part of the invoice. One of the reasons for such a withhold is Chargebacks. Chargebacks are fines that Retailers impose on Shippers because the customers, mostly Retailers, are doing extra work to process the Shipper’s product through the customer’s Supply Chain. The numbers are overwhelming. They drain time and resources from Order fulfillment, Sales, Credit, Collections, Accounts Receivables, Customer Service and Distribution personnel as they need to research and resolve chargebacks. Overall, a sizable percentage of lost profits can be attributed to chargebacks. The chargeback problem is most...

  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 interesting dynamic on LoadProof. The managers that we talked to, they hear about our product and “they’re like wow this is great, want to take advantage of this product in my distribution center or warehouse. They join the demo and one of the things we ask is how much is their  chargeback . At the time they don’t know it’s just sometimes fascinating to see this dynamic.  The organizations that have been operating all along they’re so siloed. They’ve so siloed and this warehouse manager, he’s operating a pretty good-sized facility. It was like 400K plus a squad for DC shipping, a lot of orders. This gentleman didn’t know about the chargebacks because it’s just that’s how they’ve been operating all along. The chargeback was something that was with the finance department, I mean obviously retailers when they pay the invoices they don’t pay the full invoice, they automatically take a portion of that because of these damages or this chargeback situation. It ...

  A picture is worth a thousand words and a story is worth a thousand pictures. It’s little wonder, then, that people often long to describe a problem with a picture. In their personal lives, technology savvy people snap a picture and send it off to get a problem solved. And yet, within the supply chain, no vendor has included end-to-end image tracking for stock keeping units (SKUs) as part of the base functionality of their product. In the early days of our company, we shared information about our minimum viable product (MVP) within our network. A West coast manufacturer was interested in testing our product, so we did a pilot in the organization’s warehouse and everyone there loved it. During a pilot post mortem, the customer shared headaches associated with chargebacks. These folks ship a lot to Walmart, Target, Macys, and several other retailers and charge backs amounted to $300,000 annually. Our picture-based documentation capability could at least reduce charge backs to a rea...

  This next best practice is about optimizing your  slotting process . It’s all about picking and especially it’s even more important in the e-commerce world, because you are picking one unit order and two unit orders. This is what the standard order profile is for the orders that people are placing from their computers at home through the web and through the mobile device. It’s all about picking from the active locations and piece pick locations. It’s important to make sure that your active bin locations and SKUs that are slotted in those bin locations are done optimally. With slotting tool you can assign your A locations, with respect to proximity to a packing station or your outbound shipping area.  It means choosing a location closest to the location where cartons are packed up and shipped. From this perspective you can classify your A locations, B locations, and C locations using your slotting tool. Then you can run a logic on your SKUs to find the SKU velocity, whic...

  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 ...

  What are chargebacks? Chargebacks are fines that retailers impose on suppliers because the Retailers are doing extra work to process the Supplier’s product through the Retailer’s Supply Chain. Why are suppliers getting chargebacks? Because Supplier’s shipments are not fully in compliance with the requirements set by the retailers on how the shipments should be arriving at the Retailer’s distribution center If a supplier is not fully following the compliance requirements, then that needs to be addressed first. So dedicate a person to this activity, there are people called Compliance specialists available that know how to get this right, they have a lot of experience working with specific retailers or you will have to review the routing guide. However a very good chargeback system will show your people the mistakes being made If you are doing everything correctly, then still getting chargebacks, then the chargeback management system will absolutely help you Are you including all th...

  This past summer was fabulous. My brother-in-law got married and so my family got to go to India and participate in a typical South Indian wedding ceremony end to end, including all the pre- and post-wedding rituals, pre- and post-wedding parties, gift giving and receiving, the astrology and horoscope-based ceremonies, the auspicious poojas, and other traditions that the elders insist must be done.  My daughter was very excited. A lot of these traditions stem from past experience that is barely remembered by those present. The ancestral, ethnic, clannish practices and formalities bring two tribes together and restore relationships. Sometimes, cultural differences between the families get in the way, whether its religious beliefs, food customs, or other ceremonial preferences. The two sides don’t agree, with one side insisting that the wedding rituals need to be performed based on their tribal culture while the other says that they won’t participate if a particular ceremony i...

  It’s one thing to rave about the benefits that IoT will deliver to a distribution center, but it’s another to get a look at how it really adds value and provides actionable insights. Let’s take a look at one experience I had recently. Recently, I was at a prospect site for a pilot demonstrating our technology. Typically, we show up at the client site Monday morning and get things up and running in an hour. We connect our devices to the WIFI network, then to the Warehouse Management System (WMS). We put the devices in the hands of users, get them oriented with a mini training system and they start using them. We stay at the location all week, to make sure they can work through any obstacles and test the devices in as many scenarios and with as many users as possible. We try to go across different departments and user demographics as possible.  We gather feedback and at the end of each day we run through some important questions (one’s I recommend to any organization evaluatin...

  Here is the list of top 9 Best Practices to consider when shipping products to retailer/ customer.  It is also to be mentioned that most of these best practices can be accomplished easily with little process changes. A perfectly curated list of top warehouse shipping best practices! 1.The Best Practices in Avoiding Pallet Damages and Separation During Transit Avoid pallet damages and separation during domestic and international transits with these pallet transit best practices from the supply chain expert.  Read full article >> 2.The Pallets Loading Best Practice that you must consider at your Warehouse Facility Follow these warehouse pallet loading best practices while loading pallets with high value products in to the trailer. Applies to both local and international shipping.  Read full article >> 3.The Best Practices for Stacking Pallets and Products while Shipping Follow these stacking best practices while loading pallets and high value products in ...