Warehouse Dispatch

Product moves in and out of your warehouse daily, much like a choreographed dance. If just one part of the dance is not well-managed, the flow of the entire piece is interrupted. Putaway is a critical part of the dance in your warehouse space. When errors occur in the putaway process, all warehouse processes suffer as a result.

How "real-time" is the data you use to manage your warehouse?

Not sure? Consider these questions to find out:

• Is your inventory sitting around collecting dust?
• Are you picking with pick-lists and paper?
• Do you manually update your database every time a change is made?
• Is it unclear who is doing their job efficiently and who is slacking off?
• Are the changes made to your processes usually only initiated once a crisis has occurred?

Keeping your warehouse inventory organized is essential for effective, efficient operations. It makes receiving, put away, picking, and shipping easier and smoother. However, without regular maintenance, no effort you put towards organizing your warehouse is going to have any long lasting effect.

In an ideal world, each of the products you carry in your warehouse would be stored in a single, consistent, known location. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an ideal world. Reality usually sees the same product kept on multiple shelves, in multiple locations, in different buildings, or even in different geographic locations. Trying to track the multiple locations for all your products can be a nightmare without the help of a warehouse management software.

Warehouse management software (WMS) systems became fairly standard in most large storage and shipping facilities during the 1990s. Although these systems made operations and inventory management significantly more efficient and were an indisputable upgrade compared to tracking inventory via paper, pen, and a clipboard, many companies today still resist upgrading their WMS.