Are you a SMART Retailer ??
Cross docking has gained popularity amongst the retailers and has been widely acknowledged to provide operational efficiencies and scales of economies. A key business imperative for the retail industry is quick turnaround and cross docking proves to be a definite enabler.
Effective cross docking requires ASN/ASBN from suppliers. It is very important to collaborate with your vendors to streamline the cross docking operations in a given retail organization. In order to efficiently handle the customer order flow, we need an efficient supplier order flow. Due to the short longevity of the products involved it happens more often than not, that product is received in the warehouse of a retailer only a few hours in advance of the actual shipment. These industry dynamics makes cross docking a treasure to harness.
As per the levels of cross dock models described in the Saddle creek report following classifications have been proposed.
One-touch Model: Where in products are touched only once, as they are received and loaded outbound without being placed on the warehouse dock. This model provides for the highest product velocity and the focus is on cross-dock productivity.
Two-touch Model: Where in products are received and staged on the dock, then loaded outbound without being put into storage. This model provides for the outbound load optimization and improving transportation efficiencies.
Multiple-touch Model: Where in products are received and staged on the dock, then reconfigured for shipment and loaded outbound directly from the warehouse dock. This model provides for the greatest opportunity for customization.
There are a few systemic barriers when in comes to implementing an efficient cross docking model. Most of the host systems (could be an ERP or an OM system) are decapacitated in sending pick release information to the warehouse systems unless the inventory is physically in the building and recorded in the host system. In this case the host system needs soft allocation of inventory before a pick release instruction could be sent to the WMS. Due to these reasons WMS is really unaware of the customer demand. In these kinds of scenarios appropriate item classification can come in very handy. Pick Release instruction can be made to be sent to the WMS in the absence of allocation. Another challenge is that wave planning in a WMS needs systemic inventory and allocation. Due to the dynamics involved, there may no inventory present in the WMS at the time when wave planning needs to be performed.
All these can be easily overcome by modeling the systems to meet the business requirements. Let us also look at the physical warehouse sizing and configuration aspect. A typical warehouse building has receiving doors on one side of the building, and shipping doors on the other side. This is a traditional configuration. This flow-thru design is may not be optimum for cross docking. A warehouse could be configured by, placing receiving and shipping doors on the same side of the building. This design will certainly assist in cross dock operations.
IT follows business. It can be made use of to meet the business imperatives and help an organization become world class.Cross docking is a SMART way to achieve efficiencies. It is a Simple Method to Achieve Rapid Throughput.
