Palletization Business Process | Standard Retail Inbound Needs | Approach to D365 for Commerce with Adv WH Mgmt

Hi Guys, Hope you have read my previous post on how the Retail Inventory is tracked and the implications from different Inventory pools that different Retailer maintains. In this blog, we are going to start digging in to the process requirements associated with the inbound side of a Retail Warehouse. We are going to look at the process inside of a real working Retail Warehouse.

What you see here is the beginnings of a process flow diagram that shows you what happens on the inbound side.

• On the Retail Inbound side you will see people open up a trailer and start unloading it.
• Then you’re going to see those cartons stream to an individual who’s charged with receiving them into the system. This means identifying what’s in each box, the quantity, the item, etc. And also, at that time, he or she will determine where it needs to go, or the system will determine where it’s need to go, and this will then lead to the process of palletizing.
• Here you will see some people that are palletizing these cases based on the next destination that the case needs to travel to.
• In retail, it’s unusual that every case goes straight back into storage and gets put away and available for sale. Oftentimes, these cases need to go to a lot of other destinations.

But it’s important to realize that, the inbound process is complicated. Cases can go to a wide variety of destinations other than just be put away.

As we have seen in our previous post on Retail Warehouse blueprint about how inbound product arriving at a Retail Warehouse doesn’t go straight back into the rack like it does at wholesale and some kind of verticals. There are a bunch of different destinations that it can go to. So what you’re going to look at the dock is that as the product comes off, the product is going to be sorted on to pallets that are going to those specific destinations.

So you’re going to have pallets with mixed cases on them that, once they’re fully built, need to be moved to the destinations in question. So if you look at the actual process it looks something like this.

You’ll see some people near the Unloading process where there’s no system functionality. They’re just grabbing cases and throwing it on to this little conveyor that rides back to Receiving person, who is going to do the receiving. And he’s going to enter in the quantity and the UPC information if it’s not already on the carton. In most cases, they already have carton level ASN so he only has to scan one piece of information to receive it. Then it’s going to go back to the palletizing guys who are going to put it on a pallet based on the destination that the case needs to move to next. 

If you have seen the video, you might have got the understanding that to build a pallet quantity they will need some sort of documentation with a list. They’ll glance at this list to see what needs to be palletized and what does not. We call this report a bar code receiving document. It lists the quantities arriving at each SKU on a receipt, has bar codes on it for the different SKUs and PO numbers tied to the receipt and information that details how many cases or units need to go to various destinations, such as QC or prep.

Let us move down the line and visit the receiving workstation of an actual working Retail Warehouse. Most Retail Warehouses will have a workstation like this behind every dock door.

What’s happening here is the receiving operator  is receiving cases that are coming in off of a truck. To receive a case, he’s got to be able to identify the product, he’s got to identify the quantity that’s in that box, as well as the PO that that box belongs to. And, if necessary, he’ll apply one of those unique license plates to that box as well.

Now, what you’re seeing above is a different type of receipt. This is called a carton level ASN receipt. Most of that information that I just described, like the PO, the quantity, the SKU has already been typed in for him by the vendor. So all he has to do is scan that box one time, and all that information flows into the system. Makes receiving very, very efficient. So what you also notice, at the receiving operator’s workstation on the left-hand side is he has a label printer. That label printer’s there for a reason.

One of the things that makes receiving in Retail Warehouses unique is that product can go to all these different directions. It can go back to case storage, or it could go to QC, it could go to prep. It could go back to the forward pick area. It can go to a wide variety of destinations. When that label prints, the system is deciding that this particular case needs to go to QC or it may need to go to prep. If it needs to go to QC, you’ll get a label that has a little Q on it. If it has to go to prep, you’ll see a V on it for value added services. That’s really a unique retail requirement that you don’t see in other industries. But that label is then used later on in the process to help with palletizing it to make sure that that case gets to the destination that it needs to go to.

So the next step of the receiving process is palletizing. So in palletizing, what you see is array of pallets on the floor. Each of those pallets are going to a different destination in the warehouse. So as they grab cases off of the conveyor, they’re looking at that case and saying, OK, where does it need to go? Well, they print out a little label for those cases that are going to unique destinations like quality control or value added services. So if a case has one of those unique labels, and it says Q for quality control, they’ll put it on the quality control pallet. If it doesn’t have any label at all, and that’s the vast majority of them, then they’re going to end up putting that on a case storage pallet.

We can use labels to direct the palletizing activity. But you could use a mobile device terminal as well. So when you demo the D365 F&O Warehouse management functionality of palletizing, you should be able to demonstrate the use of mobile device terminals to scan the case which will then tell them where to put it. Because using mobile device improve the tracking of the inventory and the history of where that case was received, palletized and then put away. So there are some added advantages using Mobile devices.

The last requirement in palletizing, after just being able to tell them where to palletize it is being able to signal when this pallet is ready to be put away. Because as they’re building it up, you don’t want someone to come grab it before it’s ready. So we need some kind of mechanism to signal to the material handlers that move these pallets.

We will go into some detail around that in our next blog. But just keep in mind so you can talk about during any D365 for Commerce implementation utilizing Advance Warehouse management that in palletizing, there are two primary requirements. First is to get to know where should I palletize this particular box and the second requirement is how do I tell the material handler that this pallet is ready to go.

In our next blog, we will talk about QC sampling and figuring out when something needs to go there.

Feel free to reach out for any clarifications. If you like my blog posts then comment and subscribe to the blogs.

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