General
How to handle peak loads at the end of the month?
Peak sales season can be handled in the following ways:
Stop GRN / inward activity.
Design GRN infrastructure in such a way that it can be used for outward.
Use GRN / inward manpower for dispatch.
Over time.
Create a party environment in the warehouse (music, competition, awards, good food).
Design warehousing activity in such a way that most activity is done at GRN & storage and least at outwards e.g. QC should be done at inwards (inwards generally doesn’t see peaks & troughs and not as time critical as outwards).
Tech should be so simple that an untrained, uneducated worker can carry out operations with few minutes of training. This will allow you to use other departments manpower within the warehouse for outward as well as hire temp labour.
How to know which stock should go for liquidation?
What are the possibilities for mismatch between physical & system stock?
UID doesn’t let mismatch occur (Scanning SKU/EAN vs UID - Scanning 10 times, the same SKU means 10 items of that SKU are scanned whereas scanning 10 times the same UID means only one item is scanned). Every single action in the warehouse is scan based. Humans can’t take any decision. Even if the right SKU is tried to be picked from a location that system has not suggested, the system won’t allow you to pick. Every human action is traceable. Since everyone knows that their error can be tracked, nobody does errors. Every process is extremely simple. More simplicity, lesser are the errors. Bin consolidation, cycle count etc is extremely simple. There is no feature of entering qty by typing. It’s all scan-scan-scan. Recycle desk helps to check status & history of any item in the warehouse at any given time. USPL - 70k audited by 3rd party but 0 errors, AJIO - after one year, closed account with 100% accuracy - they based us incentive for inventory accuracy. Myntra - Follows a similar process to handle 2 crore pieces inventory spread across 20L SKUs (i.e., only 10 pieces per SKU), that too, these are constantly changing SKUs. Lakhs of orders get dispatched everyday to lakhs of new addresses without error. We provide photos as an aid at every critical step/scan.
In many existing systems with clients, though scanning is available, error gets created due to operator discipline & non-scanning. How is Increff WMS different here?
No operation is possible without scanning in our tech. What to scan, where to scan, what to pick, from where to pick, sequence of scanning etc. is decided by tech & it doesn’t allow you to take any other action e.g. biometric example: In case of two biometric doors, one after other, one can enter through the second door without scanning the first door. But in our operations, a check is done whether you have scanned the previous process. B2B or B2C, picking, packing & dispatch is accurate as every piece is scanned for pick & pack & box for outwards.