Goods Receiving in a Warehouse

Receiving:

Receiving is the process of accepting inbound goods into a warehouse and storing it in appropriate storage location. It is the inbound logistics activity in a warehouse. Multiple activities are involved in receiving the goods into a warehouse.

It is the process of unloading, verifying, inspecting, and staging of material transported to a warehouse in preparation for putaway or cross-docking, sometimes including sorting and repackaging of the material.

 

Trailer Check-in:

The inbound trailer is checked into appropriate dock door for receiving. Supplier might send an ASN before shipping his goods to the warehouse. Appointments for the dock doors can be made and the trailers are checked in as per the appointments. Often before checking the trailer into a dock door they are temporarily parked in a parking yard.

Unloading and goods identification:

Once the trailer is checked in the goods in it are unloaded into a staging lane and the goods are identified. These activities can be enabled through RF terminals. The quantities are checked and confirmed in the WMS. The identified goods can be pasted with appropriate labels for tracking purpose.

Receiving:

The identified goods are formally received into the warehouse. This can be enabled using RF terminals. Often quality checks are made for the items being unloaded. If the supplier ships it in unpalletised cartons, Palletisation process is carried out and pallets are build along with pasting of pallet (or load) labels.

Putaway:

The received goods are then moved to appropriate storage location. This process is called putaway. The location selection can be manual or automatic. In case of automatic location selection the system suggests the location where the goods need to be stored based on storage optimization principles.

Inbound workflows:

There might be a need to perform inbound workflows in receiving process. For example sorting and repacking the received goods and pasting with appropriate labels can be a workflow. Exit points are defined in standard WMS packages to enable workflow inclusions into the process.

Close and Dispatch trailer:

After unloading and receiving, the inbound trailers are closed and dispatched from the warehouse. In most cases the receipt reports are printed upon trailer close and dispatch. The report will contain details about the quantities received into the warehouse. Usually an EDI message is  also sent to the host ERP system.

Exception Handling:

Sometimes the goods might get damaged in transit. These goods are either received into the warehouse with damaged status are sent back in the receiving trailer itself depending the business process agreed. Sometimes goods that are not in the ASN also might come in a trailer. Receiving those goods is called blind receipts.