Automated Pick and Pack Services ? Warehousing and Distribution

Automated Pick and Pack Services ? Warehousing and Distribution

Pick and pack warehousing is, in essence the employment of a pick and pack 3rd party fulfilment house to carry out the processing of orders, pick, pack, and dispatch of your product to the end user/customer to the specification set out by you and your customers needs and parameters. 

The Process -

Pick and pack warehousing had many different variations but in its most simple form it works as follows. Your stock is located to your chosen 3rd party fulfilment house.  All stock is put in to picking faces and bulk storage stock ready for pick and pack.
Orders will be sent, manually via, email, fax or phone, or by an integrated process, meaning when an order is placed on your e commerce site it is sent directly in to your fulfilment partners warehouse management system (WMS).

These order are then pooled and sorted, depending on your parameters, time of delivery,  pick programme (first in first out) etc.

From here a pick note is produced and given to a picker who will locate the items by product code and location and take to packing table.

At this point the order is checked and packed to packing specification.

The package then goes to dispatch where it will be sent with a best choice carrier to the customer (of course all pick and pack services differs but this is the general over view).
Pick and pack therefore can seem like a very simple process but there is a lot of variation to service and value added services that can be attached to this. Pick and pack can also provide vital information from its reporting data. Your goods in, goods out, your current stock volume and then this can all be compared day to day, month to month or year to year giving you much greater clarity over your stock.

This enables you to make informed purchasing choices, re evaluate stock held and check on seasonality.

Pick and pack warehousing has many benefits and of course some downfalls, but if you have a good relationship with your partner it is moreover the most cost effective way of distributing to your customers, not to mention the fact that pick and pack is what these business do. A good partner will understand the importance of a long term relationship and will work with you to not only give you the cost effective and mutually beneficial rate but will understand the importance of your customers needs and your customers to  you and the large part that the distribution process plays in this.

Niamh Allan has been working in the capacity of chief editor for Store It All for ten years now. With an aggregate experience of almost 15 years in logistics sector, she has attained the reputation of an outstanding logistics professional (Logistics, pick and pack fulfilment , warehousing and distribution). She loves to carry out studies on third party logistics business and has been highly appreciated as a logistics analyst. Her readers curiously wait for whatever trendy she comes up with through her columns and write ups.
 

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'Warehousing Management System' & its benefits

'Warehousing Management System' & its benefits

Warehousing involves several functions. The basic warehousing function includes, receiving and sorting of the goods, dispatching to storage, placing in storage, retrieving from storage, accumulating orders, packing the orders, shipping the orders, and record-keeping of the goods.

Thus, main objective of the Warehouse Management System is to check the movement and storage of the goods from one place to another.

The implementation of a warehousing management system requires collection of data related to warehouse, goods or inventory along with the basic strategy for operating a warehouse. The implementation helps a company to give quick delivery to their vendors and reduce labor cost as most of the part is handled through the warehousing management software, and increases customer satisfaction.

Benefits of Warehousing Management System:

• Updates warehouse manager:
With the help of WMS, a warehouse manager gets updated with the status of the shipment, order completion, and re-scheduling of the shipment.

As a result, customer satisfaction is increased.

• Retains customer relationship:
WMS has a separate module “Customers”, which greatly helps the Customer Care department in maintaining pleasant relations with the customers. The department can easily record the transactions done with the customers or meeting the customer complaints.

• Check on shipping material:
WMS checks the order before sending to the customers.

Sometimes wrong package is shipped to the customer; WMS then prompts a warning message that order of XYZ customer is wrongly placed in the packet of ABC customer.

• Eliminates bottlenecks:
WMS automates each and every warehousing process. This reduces the operational bottlenecks that arise during the process, increases production level, and flow of
In-coming customers.

• Eliminates wastage of time:
WMS helps in storing and retrieving of inventory at faster pace, which eliminates the wastage of time spent in searching the inventory.

• Record of productivity :
WMS records the productivity of the working staff. The process of recording the productivity helps in remuneration of the staff.

• Reduces inventory cost:
Warehousing management maintains the flow of the inventory. This helps in increasing profits.

• Return on working capital :
Warehousing management increases the returns on working capital for an organization. Since, the whole process of WMS moves around the warehouse, the returns on investment becomes clear.

• Track of inventory:
Warehousing management gives the real picture of the stock of inventory. Inventory, over stocked or under stocked, is harmful for an organization. Under-stock leads to cancellation of the order and overstock binds the working capital that may, at times lead to debts.

• No technical skills hiring :
Generally, implementation of any automation system, such as WMS gives an idea that to operate a system, extra technical skill force is required. However, WMS is designed in such a manner that even a low level employee can operate it.

• Control losses:
At times, companies suffer losses due to carelessness of the staff, wrong consignment shipping, or inaccurate billing. WMS helps in controlling these losses.

• Easy activities tracking:
WMS makes the working of the warehouse transparent. All the activities are recorded in the system. Even warehouse or sale offices located at distant places can keep track of the other warehouses activities.

• Eliminates wrong data entry:
WMS does not allow everyone to manipulate, add, or delete the records. This maintains accuracy.

Many companies like software development company provide best solution for warehouse management. They help warehousing management to concentrate on core business and at the same time keep control on the warehouse activities. This helps in improving the company profitability.

Christa Joe is the author of this article. She has been demonstrating her writing skills by writing the articles for custom application development like Q3 technologies from last two years. She also has a keen interest in writing stuff for warehousing management related firms. For more details, feel free to visit http://www.q3tech.com

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Dynamics Gp Warehousing: Fulfillment, Restocking, Adjustments

Dynamics Gp Warehousing: Fulfillment, Restocking, Adjustments
Microsoft Dynamics GP offers flexible modules and tools for Distribution and Logistics and general Supply Chain Management. Warehousing logistics is often very unique to your specific business model and you may expect custom programming and integration to have SCM and its parts, such as Warehouse Management System, Trucks Delivery optimization and real time tracking. Most of the Warehousing procedures require barcode scanning and scanned data transfer to the Servers via such technologies as RFID, wireless. Dynamics GP (or how it was historically known Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise) is Corporate ERP, MRP and Accounting application, which is barcoding technology neutral, meaning that most of what you expect to do in warehouse via laser scanning you can do directly in Dynamics GP forms by simply keying in text and digits (on computer keyboard). We typically recommend review Distribution related transaction entering and editing this should help you to manage your data on the Corporate ERP back end; but for Warehouse Management we recommend professional software and hardware: barcode label printers, scanners, RFID equipment, barcoding servers, etc. Also Great Plains implementation in Warehouse automation often requires careful planning and modules selection - here you should see several presentations and be ready to do serious homework. Lets review typical business processes mapping in Warehouse Management System to Dynamics GP Distribution modules and SCM processes implementation recommendations:

1.Typical Warehouse Management System has three core functionalities: Order Fulfillment (often also referred as Allocation), Inventory Reordering (Restocking, Replenishment), and internal inventory transactions (Cycle counts, moves from one warehouse to another and quantity adjustments). And this is how it is implemented in Great Plains Distribution modules: Fulfillment is naturally fit to Sales Order Processing Order or Invoice fulfillment (usually you select SOP document type without automatic allocation, as the fulfillment/allocation routine should be done separate on the warehouse floor); merchandise restocking is done in Purchase Order Processing Purchase Receipt; Inventory activity related records are done in Inventory Adjustment and Transfer. There are several WMS brands available on the Supply Chain Management software market as well as via Dynamics GP ISP channel, where Warehouse Management transactions are integrated wither into Distribution modules records or directly to General Ledger (when all your Logistics and SCM reporting is done exclusively in the external Warehousing application)

2.WMS brands available on the market. We do not want to give credits to one provider over another, if you would like to review the offers and specification sheets, please type in Warehouse Management System in Google search. The WMS business model often dictates the way to be compatible with several major Corporate MRP and ERP brands to enable broad offer to the ERP/MRP market (it is difficult to provide high quality of the software and hardware being limited to just only one Corporate MRP platform). These WMS providers give you so-called Stand Alone or External Warehouse Management Application. Dynamics GP, on the other hand has huge number of installations across the USA and Canada and Internationally (especially in Spanish speaking Latin America and English speaking countries around the Globe). This fact allows some Dynamics GP ISV partners to develop Great Plains Warehouse Management Extensions and market them to existing and new Dynamics GP customers. External WMS might be credited for being more reliable (as most of the software and hardware bugs are fixed, being reported by large pool of customers and users). WMS extensions for Dynamics GP on the other hand allow you to save on software licenses, as you do not have to pay for parallel WMS and SCM functionality, plus there is no need for WMS integration implementation and pilot period, as Warehouse Management extension works out of Great Plains Distribution tables

3.Some WMS and Dynamics GP paradoxes we found in our consulting practice. Dynamics GP customers are either growing from the small business warehouse or garage based operations (outgrowing QuickBooks, Peachtree, MYOB, SAP Business One), or they are downsizing from such MRP applications as Oracle Financials, SAP R/3, Lawson, Accpac, JD Edwards. In such reasonable instability, associated with mid-size or small business, we found that probably half of all Warehouse Management applications, as well as Supply Chain Management, Assembly on order or Simple Manufacturing, have been programmed in-house in such open programming languages as Microsoft Visual Basic, C#, MS Access, Sun Microsystems Java, Unix, PHP MySQL/Linux

4.Digital Enterprise, or how my ecommerce transactions could be fulfilled on the production facility or the warehouse floor automatically, when ecommerce sales order is placed and paid. Here the success factor is in ecommerce add-ons selection for Microsoft Dynamics GP, one of the is available from Alba Spectrum

5.XML rising star and possibly the dusk. XML was the vehicle in late 1990th, and earlier 2000th to resolve conflicting technologies between Microsoft (Windows, ADO, .Net, Visual Basic, MS Access) and the rest of the Information Technology World: Oracle, Sun, Java/EJB, Unix/Solaris. Our opinion is that XML came through the substantial transformation, and it is still the vehicle to resolve conflicting computer platforms contradictions, but we as computer consultants should find the way to agree with each other without appealing to judicial procedures

6.EDI resurrection? Electronic Document Interchange is established and ready to be considered as sort of the legacy standard. In our opinion a lot or at least some of the Dynamics GP customers are overpaying for Electronic Document Interchange support. EDI is not the rocket science and it could be programmed directly in SQL Server new query interface (in simple scenario as SQL view and in more advanced scenario as SQL Stored Procedure)

7.To request further support, please call us 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com We need to discuss your cards in order to recommend you the best solutions, which is not contingent to our preferences. We serve you USA/Canada nationwide via remote support (web sessions and phone/skype conferences). Local service is available in Western Michigan, Chicagoland, Southern California (LA, Orange County, San Diego), Houston area of the state of Texas

Andrew Karasev, http://www.albaspectrum.com Great Plains Dynamics GP and eEnterprise Certified Master, Microsoft MVP and consultant with 10 years and plus experience and expertise. Alba Spectrum, 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com. If you are thinking to implement Dynamics GP in challenging environment, we recommend you to give us a call. Our information portal is http://www.pegasplanet.com Pegas Planet

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Warehousing Management

Warehousing Management

A warehousing management system aims to control the movement and storage of materials within a warehouse and process the related operations, including shipping, receiving, put away and picking. One can increase efficiencies, enhance services, and regain control over its inventory through proper warehouse and distribution management.

Warehousing management systems time and again make the most of Auto ID Data Capture (AIDC) technology, for example barcode scanners, wireless LANs, and potentially Radio-frequency identification (RFID), in order to well examine the flow of products. Once the data has been collected, either the batch synchronization, or a real-time wireless transmission to a central database comes into picture.

The database can then provide valuable reports and information about the standing position of commodities in the warehouse.

An effective warehousing and distribution solution is one that can:

• Provide paperless course of action.

• Lessen incompetence and errors.

• Help in building up the visibility.

• Easily handle and manage stock from initial order to delivery stage.

• Enhance customer loyalty through consistency.

The warehousing management controls the movement and storage of materials within a warehouse. It not only manages the warehouse but also manages other related technologies such as inventory, inventory planning, cost, IT applications & communication technology. The container storage, loading and unloading are also now covered by warehouse management. Warehouse management is now part of SCM and demand management. Even production management is to a great extent dependent on warehouse management. It monitors the progress of products through the warehouse. It involves the physical warehouse infrastructure, tracking systems, and communication between product stations.

A warehouse management system records, collects, filters and provides with the basic information to different systems at higher levels. Warehouse management allows an organization to easily counter all the problems faced in providing significant information to the concerned person without hindering the ongoing production system. It is no doubt time saving.

Hence, a warehouse management system basically involves receiving, storing and movement of goods, normally finished goods, to various intermediate storage locations or to final consumer. The warehousing management aids optimal cost of fulfilling the order on time by managing the resources economically.

Today, we have many vendors providing warehouse management software. Many custom software development firms are also involved in building up of such software. Not doubt the number of vendors providing this software is growing yet the functionality of the software remains as is. The warehousing management process primarily focuses on controlling of the in and out flow and storage of goods in a warehouse. In order to have a good warehousing management system, one should take into account some basic factors like flexible location, warehouse tasks allocation and effective execution of the tasks.

Moreover, it is not at all mandate for every warehouse to have this system of management of material. To have this system, entirely depends upon the operation of a warehouse. In case of an organization which is set up at large scale, warehousing management becomes important and a necessity to monitor the movement of material.

Nick Thomas is the author of this article. He has been writing articles for many custom software development related organizations like Q3 technologies. Moreover, he has been actively involved in providing useful content writing material related to Warehousing management.

For more details, feel free to visit http://www.q3tech.com

Retail Warehousing Supplementation with Decisive Practices

Retail Warehousing Supplementation with Decisive Practices

A retail warehouse is a place where all the materials are stocked. With large volumes of materials coming in and being dispatched daily it is a complex and difficult task to keep track of the inventory. Retailers employ warehouse management to have an organized system that can be controlled easily. With a warehouse management system in function the movement and storage of the materials can be tracked easily.

Retail warehousing management is a laborious process that requires precision. The items are stocked according to their measurements and weight and classified according to their hazard variations. All the data has to be documented and recorded meticulously. Since there are large quantities to be handled and a variety of products stored in a retail warehouse the choice of an automated system that can handle all the processes right from retail packaging till the shipment of the orders is a wise decision.

An automated solution for retail warehouse management provides accurate details of all the items present in the inventory. The solution promotes high visibility which facilitates prevention of over stocking and storing obsolete products that consume space as well as cost. It also helps in locating the items correctly via orders, items, locations or shipping details and avoids any wastage of time.

With the automated solution businesses can efficiently use the space with the continuous movement of materials to designated locations for receiving, packing and shipping purposes. With the warehouse management solution all hazardous and critical items can be identified to ensure their safe storage and transportation.

Errors in business are detrimental that can stunt all growth prospects. Manually executing a task can incur many errors, but with the automated solution all possibilities of committing errors are eliminated. The solution also helps to reduce the load of paperwork that causes delays. And the most important thing is that it helps in timely shipment deliveries and effective customer service. With a compelling and efficient retail warehousing management program businesses can reduce overhead and inventory costs and accelerate order fulfillment.

The secret to successful handling of retail business lies in being aware of the changes in the market and adopting intelligent practices to provide quality services without causing mayhem in costs. The retail warehouse is the ultimate zone where the nature of the processes determines the success or failure of a business and relying on outdated methods is like tethering on the brink of devastation. Making amendments in the nick of time and employing the automated solutions is what grants businesses a chance to survive.

Know more about - supply base management & supply chain postponement

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