The Zone Picking Best Practice to Improve Order Picking Productivity

  This next best practice is about the warehouse zone picking process. The way this works is if your picking involves going to multiple areas, multiple isles of bin locations, and you are picking from different bin locations. This process is about eliminating all the unnecessary walking, and of course we all know the more you pick, the more you can ship, the more you ship, the more you invoice, the more you can get…

The Returns ASN Best Practice to Optimize Reverse Logistics in Your Warehouse.

  This best practice is about Returns ASN (Advance Shipment Notice).  We discussed about the ASN before and we articulated on how useful was the ASN in deployment scheduling and your were able to plan your work in the receiving area. You were also able to get upfront information as to what is going to hit your DC and you could even allocate inventory in terms of the location of the product and allocate inventory…

3PL Panacea: The Flexible Mobile Supply Chain Platform

The third-party logistics (3PL) business is tough, because it covers a wide gamut of service offerings, that include some combination of: Just move my boxes and/or pallets. Move my boxes and/or pallets and store them in your warehouse. Move my boxes and/or pallets and operate my facility. Own all the labor and activities in my facility. Offer all distribution services for my product (All I will do is download my orders into your system/supply chain)….

Best Practices in Warehouse Dock Door Appointment Scheduling

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…

The Robots Have Arrived: You’re Fired!

That’s the fear, isn’t it? I think that this prediction is half right. The robots are coming, so brace yourself. Whether we like it or not, the robots are coming. However, I don’t think those robots are going to be taking over our jobs any time soon. We’re not looking at artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that have reached sophistication where robots can take over our world. I just don’t see that happening….

Supply Chain Hungry for Legal Tools Innovations

Technology changes quickly. Other fields, such as legal and finance, are comparatively slow to evolve. (A friend’s daughter recently told me she chose the finance discipline for that reason: to avoid having to constantly learn new technologies.) Changes do come though, especially as organizations move to keep up with financial reporting requirements. At the same time, technologist know that if you miss one technology way, it’s possible to catch the next one successfully.  In 1999,…

Ownership is Everything: The Data Integrous System of Record

Our actions and decisions are only as good as the data we use to rule them. That being true, when designing complicated systems, ensure the integrity of the data set involved becomes enormously important. Obviously, the data that resides in a system should be accurate. However, it also needs to have integrity, which means consistent and not unnecessarily redundant. A good data set is invaluable. Done well, it puts all of the data elements in…

The Power of Music in Supply Chains

Conventional wisdom dictates that a picture is worth a thousand words and stories are worth a thousand pictures. I believe that…and I use stories in my presentation regularly. Of course, picking the right story is critical to making the biggest impact. Sometimes, though, I have an audience that speaks a completely different language. How do you communicate to inspire then? I think the answer is music. My daughter has been singing since she was five,…

iPad Pro Not Ready for Supply Chain Prime Times

Source: Apple When Apple introduced the iPad Pro, I was intrigued by the technology, and I could clearly see opportunity for the device in the supply chain. Unfortunately, a handful of limitations remain that will hold adoption back and keep organizations with tried and true PCs instead. Lack of browser compatibility Enterprises cannot get rid of the PC easily even if they want to. The reality is that many enterprise applications, especially browser-based apps, are coded…