Goods In - Pallet Level ASN

A few weeks ago, a client of mine asked me how long it should take to process a typical fifty-three-foot trailer receipt into his RedPrairie WMS.   It became clear after talking for a few minutes that no one goods in process fits every operation.    This got me thinking about the goods in processes that I’ve helped my client’s setup and perfect over the years and I realized this would be a good topic (or series of topics) to write about.

First, there are technically many ways to achieve goods in to a WMS.  You can have goods in from Work Order Receipts, Shop Order Receipts, Manufacturing Line Receipts, Inventory Adjustments, Cycle Count Adjustments, and other sources particular to each operation.    These goods in sources are what I call Internal Receipts.   I’m going to focus on External Receipts such as Purchase Order Receipts, Customer Returns (RMAs, RGAs, etc.), Carrier Bounce, and Warehouse Transfer Shipments.

I will summarize this issue with a common tool called Outcome Visioning, something I find extremely useful when I want to clarify tasks. Since we want to focus on outcomes, the desired outcome of External goods in Receipts is to correctly identify and disposition the inventory being received against an authorization to receive those goods.    This reconciliation is essential to facilitate the next steps for the physical flow of the goods in the warehouse as well as the commercial flow of the payment of the goods.   Exceptions such as over/under receipt, invalid or expired receipt authorizations, quality, incorrect items, compliance failures, etc. must also be managed in this process.

Pallet Level ASN

Let me start with what I believe is the Gold Standard of goods in receipts, the Pre-Identified at the Pallet Level Advanced Shipment Notice (ASN) receipt.

To visualize this type of receipt imagine that you open your fifty-three-foot trailer and you see twenty-six pallets on the floor, each with a unique, bar-coded License Plate Number (LPN).  Each of these unique LPN numbers is associated in your WMS to the proper Receipt Authorization (i.e. Purchase Order Number) and all the details are known such as SKU, Lot Number, Country of Origin, Qty, etc.     All the Warehousemen have to do to unload the trailer is to scan the LPN and locate the goods to a Quality Inspection area or directly storage, cross dock, etc.    A trailer like this can be unloaded and completed in well under an hour.

One would think that in today’s world all receipts are processed like this.  However, in my experience, this type of goods in process is rare.  Of the twenty-eight plus WMS implementations I have firsthand experience with over the last fifteen years, I have only seen this process implemented one time for receipts from an external supplier.

Why, in 2009, is this sort of goods in process the exception and not the norm?   I believe this has to do with the cost and difficulty of integration, and the disparity of functionality and or data between the sending and receiving systems.    Let me address the latter first. 

Typically a Warehouse Management System (WMS) needs and stores different data about inventory than a Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.   When I start integration projects, it often quickly becomes apparent that the master data the WMS needs to properly identify the inventory does not exist in the sending system.  Once that ugly fact is understood, you are typically left having humans identify the goods as they are received. 

The other challenge for many companies is that even if the data does exist, the cost of creating the necessary integration/EDI/etc. is too expensive for one of the partners in the relationship.   I have even seen this when the two trading partners are running the same WMS from the same Vendor and the integration should be quite simple.  

In addition to missing data and cost concerns, there is one more common reason why integration is not performed when it could be and at a reasonable cost.   Delays of necessary integration are often due to lack of understanding of the available technologies and functionality of the existing systems.  The best, and quickest, way to eliminate this understanding gap is to speak with a WMS specialist who can instruct you on the most cost effective way to attain the results you want.