Standard terminology and definitions relating to Warehouse management system.

Standard terminology and definitions relating to Warehouse management system.

Your warehouse is like bridge between you, your supplier and your target market. You pile up your required raw materials, finished products, packaging materials and final product there and further distribute it in your target market. Hence your warehouse is playing a very important role in setting up an efficient and agile supply chain.

In this global and digital era companies are under immense pressure to sustain the same level of margin, without raising the prices, hence focusing towards reducing cost, resource optimization and setting up lean supply chain. Effective management of warehouse is very necessary to speed up time to market. Here are the popular terminologies used in effective warehouse management.

ASN (Advance Shipping Notice)

Advanced shipping notice notify the customers about pending orders. It provide information about when an order will be shipped, which items are being shipped, how many of each item is being shipped and physical characteristics about the shipment such as the shipment’s weight, the number of boxes and a description of how the shipment units are packaged and mode of transportation.

Batch picking

Batch picking also known as multi-order picking is characterized by combining product demand from multiple orders into one pick instruction. After order picking, goods are sorted/consolidated by order or shipping destination. The purpose behind this is to maximizing pick quantities and minimizing operator walking distances.

Case picking

Case picking is the gathering of full cartons or boxes of product to build a pallet to avoid damage during transit.

Discrete picking

An order picking method where a single picker picks all of the items for a single order.

Cross-docking

Cross-docking is a practice in logistics of unloading materials from an incoming semi-trailer truck or railroad car and loading these materials directly into outbound trucks, trailers, or rail cars, without long-term storage of the material.

Putaway

The process of moving material from a receiving area to a storage location. Activities may include inspection, breaking down the load into more mobile components, determining the appropriate destination, preparing the destination location, transporting the items, and physically stocking them.

SKU (Stock keeping unit)

SKU (stock keeping unit, sometimes spelled “SKU”) is an identification, usually alphanumeric, of a particular product that allows it to be tracked for inventory purposes.

EPC (Electronic Product Code)

The Electronic Product Code (EPC) is designed as a universal identifier that provides a unique identity for every physical object anywhere in the world, for all time.

Inventory master file

Inventory master file contains the total quantity and storage locations of each items stored in the warehouse. IMF contains the following key bits of information like item name, item type, cost/price, quantity and location.

Location master file

Location master file contains the quantity of the item available at each storage location in the warehouse.

These are few of the popular terminologies used in warehouse management system.