Receiving and Shipping - could they be the long lost brothers
The first set of things we learn about warehouse management, when we start to read about it, is that there are a set of defined processes - Receiving, Putaway, Picking and Shipping. Simple and well defined. In the most typical scenarios, we have the receiving dock at one end of the warehouse and the shipping dock at the other. Goods arrive, stocked inside and then leave.
More often than not, a lot of time of the warehouse folks is spent in transferring of the goods from the receiving to putaway locations and then from putaway to picking. In order to have a quicker and responsive supply chain, it is always expected out of the warehouse to devise a strategy such that the lead time of delivering the goods is as less as possible and also reduces the operational cost of the warehouse. Especially in case of grocery or fast food industry, products arrive in the warehouse just in time and the turnaround time to the stores is just about a couple of hours.
So the poor doughnut which arrives in the warehouse first steps down at the receiving dock, walks and sits in the storage area for a while and when the store calls, walks down all the way to the picking slot waiting to be picked and loaded in the truck to be finally sent away to the store where it can now display itself proudly.
It could be a good solution if the warehouse structure is such that receiving and shipping locations are in vicinity of each other such that there is more opportunity for immediate loading of goods in the shipping carriers as soon as they arrive in the receiving dock. This is more like an alibi for cross dock and can be very handy in the case of food items where the size and volume of the goods are also not very big and direct transfer from receiving to shipping is easy. Immediate benefits could be:
· Reduced cost of transfers within warehouse
· Reduced lead time of shipping and delivery
· Works better for food items as more freshness is maintained
There can be a few difficulties in terms of charting out the infrastructure for correct routing of receiving and shipping trucks or better coordination required for loading the right items in the right trailer.
Receiving and Shipping can work as pillars of support to each other and result in a more effective supply chain. Not to forget, a responsive supply chain would result in happier customers - both internal as well as external. After all, Customer is KING!
