Image Enabling The Supply Chain

  I would think that electronics OEMs or distributors would be leading the charge toward quality, and I’m sure many of them are. However, the first time I encountered a quality department that did extensive quality control it was in a New Hampshire distribution center (DC) that served the apparel industry. For this manufacturer, the goal was to make fairly priced clothing that delivered good quality to middle-aged women. The Director of Quality at the warehouse, along with her team, did such a good job that this retailer was known for its quality. To meet their quality goals, workers spent a lot of time measuring the tops and pants against strict criteria, checking the cut of the pieces, figuring out how the pieces would look on real people, and making sure that the colors were good for a variety of skin tones. They thought of everything. They took pictures and shared infractions with their vendors across the supply chain. 1. Quality inspection Quality inspection is a relatively si...

  This best practices that you implement in your supply chain is to Keep Track of Stock Movements through LPN (License Plate Number). You can make it a rule in your in your DC (Distribution Center) that any product which may be just one unit or two units or three units whatever it is any product, group of products, any set of products that you’re moving always gets an LPN.  LPN could be even called as a case number, it should be always applied to the products, even if it is one product or two product that moves together in the DC.  The second rule is you should always scan this LPN into a location, it could be a  dock door location , it could be receiving, staging location in the dock-door or it could be some problem location or it could be an exceptional hospital Lane.It always helps you to find the product and improves visibility by providing details on what the product is, where it is located in your huge facility. This will help you to exactly locate the product,...

  During one of my implementations, I was talking to this DC Director, this was a lady that had this amazing knack to formulate processes completely on the fly, that worked for their complicated manufacturing and distribution center, that was handling a lot of these eye glass prescriptions. The challenge with this operation was that their product was very small and also very fragile, which means it is pretty much a norm to break a lens before a vision/glass prescription is fulfilled completely, which means the same order would go through the processes multiple times. Basically the process was the order would get downloaded into the WMS that was running the distribution center and this order could come from any one of the 20 or so systems that were feeding orders to these guys, then the closest lens would get picked, which would get sent to the manufacturing center, where the product would get tracked inside the manufacturing process where it would be ground to the specification in ...

  This is a best practice that you can refer to if you have a lot of quality issues in your distribution center. Let us assume that for some reason you opened up the box from reserve. You thought that everything was okay at the time of receiving. Then you put it away in reserve and for replenishment you moved the product from reserve to active location. After opening up the box you find that there are quality issues.  Sometimes during the picking stage they pick the product and they find some defective products or torn apparel. So you realize  that you got to have a good quality process even before the picking process because what happens is typically as the shipment hits your receiving dock you can sort the product by PO or sort the product by  SKU . After sorting you will do the receiving process and then you will do the verification process of the shipment. Verification of the shipment basically says whether you have done verification that means you have completel...

  The Internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won’t even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room. —  Eric Schmidt, Google chairman in 2015 In the world today, everything is connected and everything is becoming smart. We have smart homes, smart cities, a smart grid and even smart transportation. Soon, a lot of our daily interactions will be with tools that have intelligence, including potentially refrigerators, bottles, food containers, clothes washers, clothes dryers, dishwashers, and more. Soon, our refrigerators will be smart enough to order and get milk and other essentials delivered right to our door, before we realize we’ve run out. Our cookers will have food cooked and ready for us ...

  Blockchain has great potential to solve problems and address supply chain problems. Personally, the area that excites me most is track and trace—especially when you consider the possibility of taking these capabilities to the next level. Let us take a step back and look at the current supply chain processes and their evolution. Packing slip, paper ASN Advance Shipment Notices (ASNs) are sent in advance to let the receiver know what products or deliveries are hitting the facility. This allows the receiver to do a few things better including: Preparing labor to receive the product. Plan for order allocation and fulfilment. Effectively plan the supply and demand to run the corporate supply chain optimally and efficiently without huge spikes. Raise awareness in advance of potential exceptions. In the past, supply chain partners shared packing slips via fax. Information sharing in this manner, although labor intensive, was worth it because it resulted in collective benefit.  It w...

  Digital Camera Based Picture Capture Vs LoadProof – Comparison INTRODUCTION This document describes the following, 1. Provides a thorough comparison between the current Digital camera-based picture capturing many distribution centers do versus the LoadProof way of capturing pictures. 2. If you review the “Enterprise Photo Documentation System – White Paper – Part1” , “Enterprise Photo Documentation System – White Paper – Part2”, “Enterprise Photo Documentation System – White Paper – Part3” and then review this current document, you will get much more value out of this exercise to understand the Enterprise Photo Documentation System thoroughly. However, it is okay to review this current document by itself as well. If you need access to the Part 1 and or Part 2 of the White Paper. Background LoadProof  is a photo documentation SAAS solution that allows any warehouse manager to develop a catalog of easily searchable photos with contextual data that helps warehouses and business...

  This document describes the following, Provides high level guidelines to deploy LoadProof enterprise-wide involving 2 or more distribution centers producing the most dollar savings for warehouse managers that own the sites. Best practices to follow while deploying LoadProof across 2 or more sites in an enterprise-wide fashion Also build momentum within the enterprise among the warehouse general managers, so LoadProof is deployed swiftly producing the maximum dollar savings enterprise-wide quickly/ Any tool if not implemented correctly and accurately will not produce the desired results. So it is very important that the implementation effort is as great as the tool in order to maximize the gains from the tool such as LoadProof enterprise-wide. This document describes the implementation of an effective Enterprise Photo Documentation System in an enterprise. If you review the “Enterprise Photo Documentation System – White Paper – Part1” , “Enterprise Photo Documentation System – Whi...

  INTRODUCTION This document describes the capabilities and implementation of an effective Enterprise Photo Documentation System. If you review the “Enterprise Photo Documentation System – White Paper – Part 1” and then review this current document, you will get much more value out of this exercise to understand the Enterprise Photo Documentation System thoroughly. However, it is okay to review this current document by itself as well. ENTERPRISE PHOTO DOCUMENTATION SYSTEM What are some of the capabilities that a Enterprise Photo Documentation System needs to have? The core of the chargeback system is to have the ability to do the following High-speed picture taking, High speed picture tagging with appropriate meta data, High Speed picture uploading A failsafe repository of pictures High speed picture retrieval capabilities and High speed picture sharing capabilities so that there are no bottle necks added to the current processes. Click here to continu...

  How an Effective Photo Documentation System will help address Chargebacks resulting in Cost Savings? INTRODUCTION This document describes the benefits of an effective Enterprise Photo Documentation System. An effective Enterprise Photo Documentation 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 R...

  This is another interesting dynamic that we run into when we talk about LoadProof. We work with a lot of these  small organizations  like they have fifty people, hundred people with revenue around 20 million dollars, 50 million dollars, 20 billion dollars like that.  This was an interesting scenario where these people were very much interested in LoadProof, but they were like “oh we ship to this retailer and they don’t even talk to us and they just automatically detect from our invoice”. We don’t know what to do right, so how we saw this is that organization liked your product so much, but somebody thought “hey this is a beautiful product, they looked at all your passion, they looked at your love and they looked at your care with which you make this amazing product, the beauty of the product.  Somebody in that organization fell in love with the product and they said I mean it’s usually a buyer right so they said “hey this is a great product, beautiful product ...

  1. Introduction  This company is one of the most well-known online track loader parts suppliers which include undercarriage, engine, body parts, rubber tracks, among other things. They offer OEM and aftermarket parts at competitive prices to their customers. This company stocks 2,000 rubber tracks for all other brands of compact track loaders and mini-excavators. They assist customers directly, to avoid round-robin conversations with salespeople who don't know what they're selling. As a Parts distributor, their main focus has been delivering quality to their customers. For over 40 years now, they've been serving the compact building industry. Their unwavering dedication to quality has won them the title of "one of the most reliable suppliers" of mini excavators and compact track loaders replacement rubber tracks.  2.  Leading Parts Distributor – Macro Picture This leading parts distribution company has a facility in Georgia from where parts are distributed to cu...

  Another best practice that you can implement in your distributions center is something called appointment scheduling. So basically what this means is when the truck drivers are arriving to your DC or when when they’re about to come to your DC they call ahead through their transportation companies and say “hey please give me an appointment, and I’m going to be there at this time, this date”. Booking the appointment makes it easy to make sure when the truck arrives you have  a dock door that’s open and people that are ready to receive this product, so the truck driver can come drop off the shipment and then leave. From a transportation perspective it is very efficient for them. When you work with them by having an appointment, and not make them wait then you will be able to get better deals with the transportation provider. This is helpful especially if you’re paying for the freight transportation.  I still remember, it’s so fresh in my mind and this was as part of MBA – ...

  This next best practice that you can implement in your distribution center is something called vendor performance. So vendor performance is basically you as a retailer or a distributor or as an ecommerce order fulfiller you are buying your product from different vendors.  When the vendor ship to your DC, you can rate them on how well they are doing in terms of  compliance . Compliance requirements are mandatory in all of the big ecom warehouses. For example let’s take Walmart or Staples or Amazon, all these big distribution companies handle larger merchandise, which is being pushed through their supply chain. They need a lot of automation, material handling equipment, sorters, conveyors, and robots for moving these merchandise, which are products through their distribution center. They are all sent it to their stores and for fulfilling orders. When they have all this material handling equipment robots and everything, they can accept only certain box sizes, certain label...

  \ This best practice we are going to discuss is called as  rate shopping . The rate shopping can be done for both parcel and the ( Less than Load)  LTL. I mean the parcels are the small boxes that they ship mostly as Ecom orders. Sometimes they also ship retail orders as parcels from the distribution center to the final destination. In Ecom orders it will be a consumer that’s buying product, they place an order on the web or from their mobile device.  In the LTL scenario it will be a wholesale B2B customer that you will be shipping order to, which can be done with rate shopping. If you want to ship your LTL order next day or second day with regular ground, based on that service level you can configure all the rates.  You can get FedEx rates or FedEx as a partial service. You can get UPS Parcel Service rates, DHL parcel service rates and the USPS service rates. You can put it in the system with origin i.e the location of your facility and your destination based...

  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 ...

  Your Business Manufacture, Assemble and Ship all these heavy industrial products on time and to the right place in perfect condition so the deployment of these heavy industrial products can be done smoothly as part of construction or starting up new facilities that is already going on If you really think about it, these are products that are purchased out of somebody’s capital projects and budgets. So somebody is investing big time building large buildings or gas stations or making automotive products that consumers need to buy, or a Distribution Center is going live or for example hospitals, if these beds don’t reach on time to hospitals, people cannot get treated, people might even die 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 products arrive on time, the other resources, ...