Warehouse Components

At a high level, the essential elements in a warehouse are an arrival bay, a storage area, a departure bay, a material handling system and an information management system. As part of the process for enabling a warehouse layout, you must define warehouse zone groups, and zones, location types, and locations.

Zones

Zones are logical or physical grouping of locations within a warehouse. A warehouse is divided into multiple zones based on its attributes, like package type and velocity codes. A Zone classifies a set of locations that share common properties. Inventory for a SKU is either stocked in a specific zone or in multiple zones and locations. A zone enables defining constraints for put away, retrieval, and picking of SKUs in the warehouse. For example, case storage and unit storage make separate zones. Camcorders are stored in the lock and key zone, while television sets are stored in the bulk storage zone.

Zone Groups

Zone Groups are logical or physical grouping of zones within a warehouse. Consider factors such as the physical characteristics of a particular area. You must consider the physical layout of the warehouse, both to determine storage capacities and to achieve optimal warehouse processes. For example, there might be areas where you can use only a certain type of forklift truck. Or, if your company has products from two competing brands, within the same facility, you might want to use the single warehouse but logically and physically separate the two operations by creating two zone groups.

Location Types and Profiles

Locations types define the logical or physical grouping of the warehouse locations. For example, you can create a location type for all staging locations. Location profiles are the grouping of locations that have the same warehouse location process policies. For example, items to which the same physical capacity constraints apply.

Locations

Locations are the actual physical space used to track where the on-hand inventory is stored and picked in a warehouse. Distribution centers often have thousands of locations, all controlled by a warehouse management system . Because products have different characteristics (dimensions, weights, and so on), dividing your locations often makes sense. While defining the zones, location types, and so on, one should consider how different areas in the warehouse are used for different processes.

Location Stocking Limits

Defines the physical capacity to carry the inventory. For example, if some locations within a warehouse can hold only one pallet per location, location stocking limits can be enabled.

Fixed Picking Locations

Multiple fixed picking locations can be used within the same warehouse and for product variants.

Fixed Packing locations Multiple fixed packing locations can be used within the same warehouse and for managing packing for various product variants.

Warehouse Packaging Process

Before shipping, businesses need to make sure that the items will arrive in good condition. Packaging is a form of protection against environmental threats that the product will face from the time it leaves warehouse facility until the time it reached the customer. The packaging is intended to provide protection for the item as it is being handled in the warehouse or when the item is being shipped.

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Warehouse Returns Process

In the normal course of business, customers are likely to return orders from time to time due to various reasons and business should design processes the manage and accept such returns. A well designed returns management process can reduce costs and issues associated with returns or exchanges.

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Outbound Shipment Process

The Outbound process starts with routing the shipments. The Outbound execution process starts from the point when pick tasks are completed for an outbound shipment and ends at the point where the outbound packages are loaded into trailers. The Warehouse Outbound process includes managing and controlling outgoing materials starting from the download of orders through to the shipping of products from the warehouse.

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Warehouse Count Process

Inventory is money, and hence businesses need to perform physical inventory counts periodically to make sure that their inventory records are accurate. The traditional approach to conducting inventory counts is to shut down a facility during a slow time of year to count everything, one item at a time. This process is slow, expensive, and (unfortunately) not very accurate.

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Warehouse Components

At a high level, the essential elements in a warehouse are an arrival bay, a storage area, a departure bay, a material handling system and an information management system. As part of the process for enabling a warehouse layout, you must define warehouse zone groups, and zones, location types, and locations.

Read more
Miscellaneous Warehouse Processes

At the end of each inventory control, the Contractor provides the Ordering Person with an inventory report which contains a list of all stock adjustments. The Ordering Person uses the report to create, by use of his/her own means, necessary value and accounting adjustments related to the stock. Let us look at some to the mislaneous warehouse processes not covered earlier.

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Warehouse Management

Warehouse management and distribution logistics involve the physical warehouse where products are stored, as well as the receipt and movement of goods takes place. Warehouse management aims to control the storage and movement of products and materials within a warehouse. These operations include the receipting of inwards goods, tracking, stacking and stock movement through the warehouse.

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Inbound Receiving Process

When products arrive at a facility, there need to be a defined process to let them in. The process for accepting inventory when it arrives is called "Receiving". Any warehousing operation must be able to receive inventory or freight from trucks at loading docks and then stow them away in a storage location. Receiving often involves scheduling appointments for deliveries to occur, along with unloading the goods and performing a quality inspection.

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What is a Warehouse & why companies need them?

All organizations hold stocks. In virtually every supply chain, gaps exist between when something is produced and when a customer is ready to buy or receive it. Stocks occur at any point in the supply chain where the flow of materials is interrupted. This implies that products need to be stored during this period of gap.

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Warehouse Layouts

One of the most important decisions when running a warehouse is its layout. Warehouse layout defines the physical arrangement of storage racks, loading and unloading areas, equipment and other facility areas in the warehouse. A good layout aligned with the business needs could have a significant effect on the efficiency.

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