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.

Overview of Third-Party Logistics

Third-party logistics (abbreviated as 3PL, or TPL) is an organization's use of third-party businesses to outsource elements of its distribution, warehousing, and fulfillment services. A third-party logistics provider (3PL) is an asset-based or non-asset based company that manages one or more logistics processes or operations (typically, transportation or warehousing) for another company.

Read more
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.

Read more
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.

Read more
Warehouse Consolidation

Transport operations are often divided into full load and part load and due to economies of scale, the unit costs are higher for part loads. Our customer needs several part loads delivering, so it can reduce costs by consolidating these into full loads. Then it gets all the part loads delivered to a warehouse near the suppliers, consolidates them into full loads, and pays the lower costs of full-load transport to its operations.

Read more
What is the difference between Warehouse Management & Inventory Management?

The terms “inventory management” and “warehouse management” are sometimes mistakenly used interchangeably as they both deal with operations and products of industries. Despite their few similarities, there are many notable differences between warehouse and inventory management systems.

Read more
Types of Inventory Count Processes

While dealing with lots of inventory in a warehouse, lots of things can go wrong. Shipments may not have the right number of units in them, or they could get damaged somewhere along the supply chain. Discrepancies in the stock may arise as part of every inventory control, and need to be corrected immediately after the inventory control procedure has been finished.

Read more
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.

Read more
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.

Read more
Inbound Putaway Process

After products have been received and passed a quality inspection, they need to be stored so that you can find them when you need them. This process is called putaway. The spot where you store a particular product is called a location. One section of a warehouse might have small locations for light items; another area may have large locations on the floor for heavy items.

Read more
Business Case of Multiple Warehouses

Adding extra warehouses to business provides many benefits such as reducing shipping costs, increasing storage capacity, and having warehouses for specific purposes to simplify overall warehouse management. Multiple warehouses allow you to organize your inventory in a way that helps your business be more effective.

Read more