Image Enabling The Supply Chain

  We’re going to discuss another best practice that you can implement in your distribution center (DC). These practices need some more work to implement, like you have to design your systems, your process and so forth. This is not something that you can implement tomorrow or day after tomorrow, without process changes, systemic changes. But this is good to know because when you’re upgrading next time or when you’re implementing a brand new WMS for your distribution center this is something definitely you want to think about. This is about the best practices in using ASN. An ASN is called an Advance Shipment Notice, that means you are getting a notice ahead of time that what is going to come to your Distribution Center (DC). It means what are the benefits of knowing what is going to hit your DC, your receiving dock. There are a lot of benefits when you have that information in prior, you can plan better in terms of receiving, have people ready to receive the product and you can plan...

  It was nice a Sunday evening at Orlando Florida. Our company, Smart Gladiator, was one of the Start-Up Technology companies that was selected to represent the Georgia team in the Retail Industry Association (RILA)  Retail Supply Chain Conference 2017 . The conference was full of educational sessions. Not just a source of subject matter experts discussing the major trends, the event was a great way to network and learn from other leaders and stalwarts of the Industry. The one that inspired me the most was a very down to earth, straight talk presentation by Crystal Hanlon, president of the Northern Division of The Home Depot. She emphasized, just getting work done is not enough. One needs also to showcase the work done, so everybody, especially the influencers that are going to impact how you grow, are aware of your accomplishments. You need to take time, strategize and have a regular action in place, to communicate and showcase your accomplishments in front of these exec...

Your Business You ship parts You source the parts from the manufacturer and ship them to your customer If you really think about it, these are products that are purchased because somewhere a big machine or equipment is not working and needs this part. So somebody is waiting for this equipment or big machine to be fixed ASAP so they can complete their project. So it is very important as a Warehouse Manager you do your part of the job thoroughly and deliver them on time. Obviously not only do the job and also keep proof that you did your job right to show it to other parties in the Supply Chain So when your parts arrive on time, the other resources, tools, experts that are needed to finish the project or other projects finish their part and complete the project on time Let us say there is this large excavator that had a part broken, then they have to order the part ASAP, get the part shipped, receive the part and then replace the part, until then there are multiple resources, both e...

  Quote “The customer’s customer claimed there were a couple of damage units, so our customer went ahead and asked us. As we had photos of it and he let them know that we did have those pictures as proof and then the $1900 claim was dismissed”. – Ernesto Ayala, Leading 3PL Company. Transcript Ernest – You know how that transpired or what happened after using LoadProof ?   Ernesto – Okay well yeah, the customer’s customer claimed there were a couple of damage units, so our customer went ahead and asked us. As we had photos of it and he let them know that we did have those pictures as proof and then the claim was dismissed .   Ernest – Oh that’s great and you were able to get off the hook there for any liability or any charges. Ernesto – Correct Ernest – Oh that’s great, and just curious like you know what the cost was or what that cost would have been if you didn’t have pictures in that situation. Click here to here continue reading this article.

  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 ...

  our Business You distribute food products, which could fall under Dry, Produce or Frozen categories You distribute alcohol products You distribute pharma products While doing this you often run into OSD issues, Overage, Shortages and Damages Overages – You shipped more than ordered, which could result in non-compliance chargeback Shortages – You shipped less than what was ordered, which could result in non-compliance chargeback Damages – Your products arrived damaged, which would result in a rejected load or a damage claim While shipping food products it is also very important to clean the trailers thoroughly in order to comply with FDA requirements, I had a customer once they would write lines and lines of cleanliness description in the system after washing their trailers thoroughly, so just in case something happens, they can go back to their customer and show them how well they have been cleaning the trailers Another challenge while shipping produce or frozen items is that, yo...

  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 the documentation? Packing slip, Shipping Label, Retailer label, BOL or Manifest, Invoice, Is your product in a good condition? Are you using correct box dims? Are you shrink wrapping as per...

  If you are looking to upgrade your  WMS  or if you’re getting a new WMS or switching to another WMS or if this is your first time WMS, here’s the another feature to consider. This feature is called cartonization. Cartonization is done among the different carton box sizes that you have for your order, whatever items that are being shipped in that order, you find the smallest box that will hold these items of the order in a pretty tight fashion with enough dunnage. Cartonization helps you to reduce your transportation costs significantly and especially if you do a lot of parcels. If you do rate shopping between FedEx, UPS and USPS you could get even more savings. Cartonization has a lot of other capabilities such as nesting logic and there are a lot of things that come with that you could take advantage of. We had an interesting problem with one of our clients. Their WMS will figure out the fit of all the items in a small box but sometimes the operators would struggle to ...

  1. Introduction  Recently, this Leading Floor Manufacturing Company implemented LoadProof – the centralized enterprise photo documentation system. This document describes the benefits of an effective photo documentation that helps in avoiding freight claims and chargebacks. This Leading floor manufacturing company was established in 1915 by John Campbell, headquartered in Salem, New Jersey (USA). They have been in the industry for almost 100 years and continue to maintain their quality and customer satisfaction. Residential and commercial sheet vinyl, luxury vinyl, laminate and hardwood, as well as commercial carpet, rubber are the products manufactured by them.  2. Leading Floor Manufacturing Company – Macro Picture   This company has a warehouse in Tennessee that ships delicate goods all over the United States. As a manufacturer they provide flooring products for both industrial and residential applications. Their flooring materials are used to complete fl...

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 to the ...

  1. Assign Ownership of Aisles to Operators So They Keep their Aisles Clean with Pride Managing the operator’s aisle pristine and in an orderly way is necessary to increase the  picking  in the warehouse. When operators are happy and proud of the work they do – they do even better. To make them proud of the work they do install a display in every aisle saying “This isle is maintained with pride by – “operator name”. 2. Implement Daily Cycle Counts Daily Cycle Count programs are a great way to ensure you maintain inventory accuracy throughout the year, and many companies employ a combination of daily  cycle-counting  their key products and count all products during their 100% physical inventory. The goal of cycle counting is to accurately count your inventory without spending too much time on counting. Picking accuracy and picking efficiency will increase after implementation of daily cycle counting program in your warehouse. Increase cycle counting locations in...

  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...

  Here is another tip from our supply chain expert on chargebacks. We have this conversation with warehouse shippers and we run into some really interesting dynamics. Obviously organizations are paying and they are siloed. Sometimes operations managers don’t know what the CEO and CFO is concerned about.  If everything was great in an ideal organization then everyone would know everything. They are all singing the same song, but when we run into some ground realities it is not the same.  They take pictures, but when we ask about the pain of taking photos in their organization when they ship their product from their organization when it’s leaving from the  outbound dock  and inbound dock the true realities we come to know. When you’re receiving a product from someone else do you take pictures they’re like “oh yes absolutely or we take pictures all the time”. The next question  we ask them is where they store them, what happens to those pictures, and how they ...

  This is another interesting question that came from one of our customers and this was like “hey we have this problem where we are shipping these pallets and somehow these pallets are broken into two and and they get delivered as two different pallets”. Even though they tell the carrier or whoever they are shipping through that nobody’s supposed to be doing that.  What they found out was that the solution was to fully shrink wrap the pallet and then fully seal it with a security tape around the pallet and then add a sign saying “do not separate pallet”. There are stickers that you can use as a label or even print a sheet of paper and then add do not separate pallets in a different color or even in a red color so that they know they’re not supposed to separate this pallet.  Also it’s better to apply a security tape so if the security tape is tampered with, you can show “hey look at these pictures when it left our facility this is how it was shipped and it’s all supposed t...

  Recently, this Leading Floor Manufacturing Company implemented LoadProof – the centralized enterprise photo documentation system. This document describes the benefits of an effective photo documentation that helps in avoiding freight claims and chargebacks. This Leading floor manufacturing company was established in 1915 by John Campbell, headquartered in Salem, New Jersey (USA). They have been in the industry for almost 100 years and continue to maintain their quality and customer satisfaction. Residential and commercial sheet vinyl, luxury vinyl, laminate and hardwood, as well as commercial carpet, rubber are the products manufactured by them. This company has a warehouse in Tennessee that ships delicate goods all over the United States. As a manufacturer they provide flooring products for both industrial and residential applications. Their flooring materials are used to complete floor laying works by other companies constructing a building. It falls within their responsib...

  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 >>

  Data is the new oil of the Digital economy.   It has been said that data in the twenty-first century is like oil in the eighteenth century. I  don’t agree with this 100%. Like oil, data has to be refined before it is used, and it’s only as valuable as the insights that are drawn from it. Further, oil is a limited commodity, and we all know that the deluge of data is getting bigger every day. And with the proliferation of sensors everywhere, especially in mobile devices, it is much easier to gather data from business operations and also get much better insights from it. We are data rich, but information poor ,  this is changing with the rise of AI, ML and the cost of computing power going down significantly experts are able to run several analytics models and cull out some deep insights from the data that is available. Companies have managed to generate 20% of their revenue from Data and Analytics products and services Data experts are getting a seat in the C suite ...