The Best Practices in Cross-docking with Benefits

This distribution center best practice is called the cross-docking. Cross-docking is basically sending a product you are sending from one dock to another dock i.e. from the receiving dock to the outbound shipping dock directly without any intermediary processes. Cross-docking makes it so much efficient because you don’t have to send it to the reserve and then again from reserve to the active location and then pick from the active location. In the cross-docking process…

Why You Need Cartonization in Your Fulfillment Center?

If you are looking to upgrade your WMS or if you’re getting a new WMS or switching to another WMS or if this is your first time WMS, here’s the another feature to consider. This feature is called cartonization. Cartonization is done among the different carton box sizes that you have for your order, whatever items that are being shipped in that order, you find the smallest box that will hold these items of the…

The Best Practices for Implementing Advanced Shipment Notice (ASN)

We’re going to discuss another best practice that you can implement in your distribution center (DC). These practices need some more work to implement, like you have to design your systems, your process and so forth. This is not something that you can implement tomorrow or day after tomorrow, without process changes, systemic changes. But this is good to know because when you’re upgrading next time or when you’re implementing a brand new WMS for…

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….

Tracking America’s Cannabis Supply Chain Challenges

  Canada has declared Cannabis or Marijuana a legal medicine. United States is following suit, however here in the US, it is being done state by state, Colorado has done that for quite some time, many states are following, for the latest states please google as it is changing every time you read this article. So naturally there are a lot of Cannabis vendors that are going to set up shop and start selling them….

Supply Chain Hungry for Legal Tool Innovation

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,…

Expect Accountability from Supply Chain Operators & Partners

This past summer was fabulous. My brother-in-law got married and so my family got to go to India and participate in a typical South Indian wedding ceremony end to end, including all the pre- and post-wedding rituals, pre- and post-wedding parties, gift giving and receiving, the astrology and horoscope-based ceremonies, the auspicious poojas, and other traditions that the elders insist must be done.  My daughter was very excited. A lot of these traditions stem from…