How Can The Warehouse Receiving Process Be Made Better?

Receiving procedures at warehouses are crucial for maintaining inventory system integrity and assuring product availability for clients.

Items fall through the cracks, are not tallied, do not receive proper inspection, and fail to provide evidence of vendor problems that harm profitability without an effective receiving system.

Why do we refer to Receiving as your warehouse's "Lynchpin Process"?

Because of its position in front of all other processes, if it is not operating at peak efficiency, it has a negative impact on all downstream processes. clogging the dock, mislabeling putaway products, or paying trucks for idle time while waiting for a bay to open.

How do the most well-run facilities achieve this?

As detailed in our "Warehouse Efficiency Tips," it all starts with a fantastic strategy that leads to an efficient dock design. Making the most of your facility's architecture and amount of bays is an important part of structuring your space to optimize Receiving.

To avoid waste and inefficiencies that can arise at this level of operation, any business system must incorporate a comprehensive management program. The success of warehouse management in the supply chain can have a direct impact on the overall profitability of the company.

Todays Warehouse Receiving Systems

Receiving procedures entail the transfer of ownership of goods, which entails financial responsibility by definition.

The content can be made available to the consumer as quickly as feasible if the documentation is accurate, correct, and runs smoothly and efficiently. The accounting and payout for items are directly affected by correct reporting of what is received.

Inaccuracies in counting or failure to disclose damaged or missing products result in the company paying for goods it did not receive, which has a long-term impact on the bottom line. Finding ways to improve warehouse systems such that they are more precise, failsafe, and simple increases company profitability in a practical sense.

What is the outcome of all those squandered stages in receiving? Time is squandered, and with labor costs at an all-time high, it not only costs money but also affects productivity. 

So, what's the answer? Because most of the footsteps originate from walking to a printer, you can get rid of them by putting your printer on wheels and wheeling it to work. The principle is straightforward.

Using a strong, lightweight lithium battery pack on a cart that can transport not only your label printer but also your full workstation, including a laptop, monitor, scanner, and other peripherals, not only boosts productivity but also decreases tiredness and boosts staff morale.

Improving the efficiency of warehouse receiving

Location, staff, equipment, and schedule are essentially the same in today's warehouses as they have been since the dawn of large-scale industrial operations.

Despite the fact that technology has advanced tremendously, these basic behaviors are still required in every situation. Simple systems, such as dock scheduling, which requires shippers to notify the receiving department 24 hours prior to a delivery, can assist managers in ensuring that the proper systems are accessible when they are needed.

The scheduling process has the potential to dramatically increase the ability to handle incoming items and generate precise inspection, labeling, and counts. When storage is not necessary, another approach, cross-docking, delivers commodities to another dock for transportation right away. This strategy offers yet another opportunity to improve efficiency by making greater use of dock and storage space.

Labeling

In recent years, the way received goods are labeled has changed substantially. Warehouse reception has become more complex and precise than ever before because to computerization, bar-coding, radio-frequency ID scanners, and automated pallet management and storage systems.

However, these technologies will necessitate more personnel training to guarantee that they are implemented appropriately and that the benefits are maximized.

Process

One of the most important parts of warehouse receiving operations is accountability. Each employee must keep track of his or her actions in relation to the overall operations. Miscounts, damaged shipments, and partial deliveries are not overlooked in this way on a busy delivery day.

Before items may move through the system and become available as ordinary inventory, changing technology typically needs a change in the process, in who handles them, where they are handled, and how long they are handled. To cut expenses and errors, exceptions to the regular process should be removed as much as possible.

The design of the building you're in will have a significant impact on your Receiving process, as well as the flow downstream to other processes! However, design can only help a process that is currently operating poorly, not transform it.

If your warehouse receiving procedure isn't meeting your expectations, what can you do to enhance it?

It all starts with a clear grasp of the problems. By monitoring the wasted footsteps that are frequent on most receiving docks, an app like Motion Meter may get you started. It's usual for process "measurement" to leave out things that aren't explicitly stated as part of the process's movements.

Is "go from receiving dock to office and print labels for incoming pallet(s)" part of your Receiving process?

Most likely not. A measurement instrument like Motion Meter makes it simple to document those phases, as well as the remainder of your process — both for Receiving and for other operations!

Inspection

Inspection of arriving items is just as vital as inspection of exiting items. Problems with vendors, shippers, and other handlers can be detected here, at the start of the warehousing process.

Because things can be reviewed immediately at this point, enough time and people should be set aside for inspection in order to give correct inventory data and notify any issues to the vendor or shipper. In this method, insufficient packaging or delivery delays can be assessed and adjusted as needed.

Replenishment

Warehouse receiving processes must all be linked to an accurate replenishment process that ensures that things are reordered at least 2 to 4 weeks before they are needed.

Miscounts and warehousing of defective items are eliminated with an efficient warehouse system, disrupting the capacity to retain an adequate supply of suitable resources on hand. In this approach, your warehouse receiving system collaborates with your purchasing department to improve your company's efficiency.

To ensure the best warehouse reception process, operations must be examined on a regular basis to identify issue areas, as well as an ongoing effort to build logistics solutions that improve data collecting and physical systems.

"Mobile Printing Solves a Problem We Didn't Know We Had!" say the hundreds of Top 500 retailers and 3PLs who now employ "mobile powered receiving stations." Many of them, who have fleets of carts across various locations, began with two or three to test the waters in Receiving and immediately discovered that the ROI was positive within six months.

Choosing the Correct Metrics

The correct measurements must be collected in order to design and implement the most effective systems. These are the most common:

• Time from dock to stock – the overall time it takes to transport materials through the system and into usable condition.
• Receiving error reporting - During the warehousing process, systems should be in place to double-check the system using label scans to alert to errors.
• Dock usage - keeping track of how many dock doors are being used, as well as how much space is being used, to guarantee maximum efficiency.
• Shipper errors, such as erroneous quality, the wrong goods, or paperwork issues, must be recorded by the shipper in order for shippers to be alerted to concerns.

Warehouse Personnel

The tiredness factor and the ergonomic influence on workers are two additional benefits that aren't often considered in process analytics. 

Excess footsteps make financial sense and are always a part of process improvement efforts, but they also reduce tiredness, which means workers are not only more constant in their output levels at the end of the day, but they are also less likely to be sick or injured.

While fatigue isn't something you'd ordinarily measure in a warehouse, eliminating sources of it will make a difference, which the fast-paced nature of the pandemic increase has proved will become increasingly important in terms of human resource management.

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