High customer demands and challenging goods management
The market for wholesalers and wholesale traders is extremely competitive. In order to succeed, you need to continually work with efficiency and lower cost levels. The challenge lies in being more flexible and the ability to adapt to market demands. Ulf Henrikson explains:
"All the wholesalers and wholesale traders I meet are experiencing continuously higher demands on later stop times and more frequent deliveries to customers. At the same time, the trend of using several order channels such as internet, phone and VMI is still strong".
"Many of the businesses we meet tell us that Goods Received is the bottleneck they need most help with in managing in a better, more efficient way. It’s as big a problem as the challenges people face in optimizing picking rounds”, Staffan Persson continues.
The result is a continuous influx of more frequent but smaller orders. These are difficult to manage effectively. At the same time, work at the warehouse is challenged by a considerable flow of varied incoming goods. This applies to both stocked and transit/cross docking goods.
Huge advantages with advance shipment notice
A solution to the problem of challenging goods inflows is cross docking and advance shipment notice. This measure is the first step towards shorter internal lead times. It also ensures that the business can avoid situations of a lack of delivery capacity despite articles being stocked in the warehouse. This could be decisive in customer retention.
Keep your cool and achieve more frequent picking
When it comes to the demand for more frequent picking, i.e. increasing the capacity of every picking round, the solution is found in how picking is planned and allocated throughout the day. It also has a direct effect on the management of incoming goods.
"The key to increased capacity of picking rounds, and increased efficiency in the warehouse, is to be cold as ice", says Erik Frödå.
Staffan Persson adds:
"Assume that you only know about a small part of your orders in the morning. The rest of the orders arrive continuously throughout the day. If you make provisions for managing picking, often with few order rows for each ordering first thing in the morning, you’ll have colleagues who won’t handle picking assignments effectively. As a result, picking rounds will be as long in terms of transport but more infrequent between each pick. Moreover, the customer you just picked for may order more goods later that day".
Erik Frödå continues:
"Be as cold as ice and don’t release picking assignments until you have a good overview of the day’s picking as possible. If we assume that at 14:00 you know about 80% of the day’s orders, it’s a lot more effective to let all the resources manage incoming goods and picking replenishment until that time. Then shift focus to order management. The shortage of warehouse goods is minimized and synergies between different picking assignments are made possible".
"A WMS-system facilitates this process as it can optimize more orders. We have customers who have worked this way and were even able to shorten the total working day. That’s the complete opposite of what you spontaneously might think", Staffan Persson concludes.
Can everyone wait?
To dare to wait, you need to know about the work situation and time management for various assignments in your own warehouse as well as have control over all incoming orders. Different companies acquire that knowledge and control in different ways.
"A support system which is updated in real-time always gives you the control you need to keep your cool. It’s an important building block in the work towards competitive warehouse management." Ulf Henrikson concludes.