Warehouse Components

At a high level, the essential elements in a warehouse are an arrival bay, a storage area, a departure bay, a material handling system and an information management system. As part of the process for enabling a warehouse layout, you must define warehouse zone groups, and zones, location types, and locations.

Zones

Zones are logical or physical grouping of locations within a warehouse. A warehouse is divided into multiple zones based on its attributes, like package type and velocity codes. A Zone classifies a set of locations that share common properties. Inventory for a SKU is either stocked in a specific zone or in multiple zones and locations. A zone enables defining constraints for put away, retrieval, and picking of SKUs in the warehouse. For example, case storage and unit storage make separate zones. Camcorders are stored in the lock and key zone, while television sets are stored in the bulk storage zone.

Zone Groups

Zone Groups are logical or physical grouping of zones within a warehouse. Consider factors such as the physical characteristics of a particular area. You must consider the physical layout of the warehouse, both to determine storage capacities and to achieve optimal warehouse processes. For example, there might be areas where you can use only a certain type of forklift truck. Or, if your company has products from two competing brands, within the same facility, you might want to use the single warehouse but logically and physically separate the two operations by creating two zone groups.

Location Types and Profiles

Locations types define the logical or physical grouping of the warehouse locations. For example, you can create a location type for all staging locations. Location profiles are the grouping of locations that have the same warehouse location process policies. For example, items to which the same physical capacity constraints apply.

Locations

Locations are the actual physical space used to track where the on-hand inventory is stored and picked in a warehouse. Distribution centers often have thousands of locations, all controlled by a warehouse management system . Because products have different characteristics (dimensions, weights, and so on), dividing your locations often makes sense. While defining the zones, location types, and so on, one should consider how different areas in the warehouse are used for different processes.

Location Stocking Limits

Defines the physical capacity to carry the inventory. For example, if some locations within a warehouse can hold only one pallet per location, location stocking limits can be enabled.

Fixed Picking Locations

Multiple fixed picking locations can be used within the same warehouse and for product variants.

Fixed Packing locations Multiple fixed packing locations can be used within the same warehouse and for managing packing for various product variants.

Outbound Picking Process

When a customer wants a product that has been stored in the warehouse, the same need to be picked off the shelf (or off the floor) and get it ready for shipping. Depending on how big is the warehouse, picking can take a while. (Many distribution centers cover more than 1 million square feet.). Hence, warehouse order picking methods are an important aspect within any warehouse.

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Types of Inventory Count Processes

While dealing with lots of inventory in a warehouse, lots of things can go wrong. Shipments may not have the right number of units in them, or they could get damaged somewhere along the supply chain. Discrepancies in the stock may arise as part of every inventory control, and need to be corrected immediately after the inventory control procedure has been finished.

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Inbound Putaway Process

After products have been received and passed a quality inspection, they need to be stored so that you can find them when you need them. This process is called putaway. The spot where you store a particular product is called a location. One section of a warehouse might have small locations for light items; another area may have large locations on the floor for heavy items.

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Warehouse Layouts

One of the most important decisions when running a warehouse is its layout. Warehouse layout defines the physical arrangement of storage racks, loading and unloading areas, equipment and other facility areas in the warehouse. A good layout aligned with the business needs could have a significant effect on the efficiency.

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Warehouse Staffing & Roles

Resource Planning is the process of planning for expected workload and determining the number of resources required to complete each activity in the warehouse. There are many types of warehouse positions, and they also vary by the employer, the scale of operations and location. Discussed here are generic positions applicable to warehouse management processes.

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Outbound Shipment Process

The Outbound process starts with routing the shipments. The Outbound execution process starts from the point when pick tasks are completed for an outbound shipment and ends at the point where the outbound packages are loaded into trailers. The Warehouse Outbound process includes managing and controlling outgoing materials starting from the download of orders through to the shipping of products from the warehouse.

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Distribution Network Planning

To stay competitive in today’s tough market, the location of your warehouse is vital. To grow retail business need to offer to customers faster and affordable shipping time, which is dependent on the warehousing location as the location of the warehouse affects the transit time to ship orders to customers.

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What is a Warehouse & why companies need them?

All organizations hold stocks. In virtually every supply chain, gaps exist between when something is produced and when a customer is ready to buy or receive it. Stocks occur at any point in the supply chain where the flow of materials is interrupted. This implies that products need to be stored during this period of gap.

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Warehouse Labeling Process

Warehouses can be places where piles of packed or loose products occupy space. If left disorganized, it will become very challenging to identify products for packing or picking. Hence, proper organization of warehouse is very important. Warehouse labeling systems eliminate this problem by making sure products are easily identified and managed during the warehousing and shipping process. Labeling is the most functional and cost-effective way to keep your warehouse organized and operating efficiently.

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Overview of Warehouse Processes

The basic function of a warehouse is to store goods. This means that they receive deliveries from suppliers, do any necessary checking and sorting, store the materials until it is dispatched to customers. Traditionally warehouses were seen as places for the long-term storage of goods. Now organizations want to optimize their customer experience and try to move materials quickly through the supply chain, so the role of warehousing has changed.

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