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.

Cross Docking Process

One of the warehousing best practices that retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and Target have adopted is known as cross-docking. During this process the inbound products are unloaded at a distribution center and then sorted by destination, and eventually reloaded onto outbound trucks. In real parlance, the goods are not at all warehoused but just moved across the dock (hence the name).

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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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Warehouse Packaging Process

Before shipping, businesses need to make sure that the items will arrive in good condition. Packaging is a form of protection against environmental threats that the product will face from the time it leaves warehouse facility until the time it reached the customer. The packaging is intended to provide protection for the item as it is being handled in the warehouse or when the item is being shipped.

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Warehouse Consolidation

Transport operations are often divided into full load and part load and due to economies of scale, the unit costs are higher for part loads. Our customer needs several part loads delivering, so it can reduce costs by consolidating these into full loads. Then it gets all the part loads delivered to a warehouse near the suppliers, consolidates them into full loads, and pays the lower costs of full-load transport to its operations.

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Inbound Receiving Process

When products arrive at a facility, there need to be a defined process to let them in. The process for accepting inventory when it arrives is called "Receiving". Any warehousing operation must be able to receive inventory or freight from trucks at loading docks and then stow them away in a storage location. Receiving often involves scheduling appointments for deliveries to occur, along with unloading the goods and performing a quality inspection.

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Different Types of Warehouses

Warehouses may seem like a simple, straightforward concept, but they actually include a variety of different types of warehouses that all have their own niche. The type of warehousing that’s right for you depends on your specific industry, location, and needs. From private warehousing, distribution centers, and climate-controlled warehouses, there’s an option to suit every business.

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Business Case of Multiple Warehouses

Adding extra warehouses to business provides many benefits such as reducing shipping costs, increasing storage capacity, and having warehouses for specific purposes to simplify overall warehouse management. Multiple warehouses allow you to organize your inventory in a way that helps your business be more effective.

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Types of Order Picking Methods in the Warehouse

There are many different types of picking in a warehouse and each one works as a customized solution for each business. Depending on the size of your warehouse and inventory, the manpower you have on hand, and the number of customer orders made each day, there may be certain methods that are more efficient for you than others.

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Warehouse Count Process

Inventory is money, and hence businesses need to perform physical inventory counts periodically to make sure that their inventory records are accurate. The traditional approach to conducting inventory counts is to shut down a facility during a slow time of year to count everything, one item at a time. This process is slow, expensive, and (unfortunately) not very accurate.

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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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