Inventory Management & Control in a Warehouse

Inventory management inside a warehouse is key in keeping the accuracy of the records and to do vital transactions like replenishments. Different activities forms part of inventory management operation. They are as follows.

Inventory transfers

Inventory transfer is an act of moving inventory from one storage location to another storage location. The purpose may be for consolidating the less than pallet loads into full pallet load, or the inventory placement is not matching with the system records.

Inventory Adjustments

Inventory Adjustments is correcting the quantity in order to accomplish certain goals like maintaining the record accuracy, accounting the missing inventory, scrapping the inventory inside a warehouse and others.

Ownership transfers

Client transfer / Ownership transfers is transferring the ownership of inventory from one client to another client. This may arise due to sales or inaccurate accounting of inventory.

Lot Management

Lot management is the process of managing the items as per the production lot to which they belong. Sometimes lot conversion is needed in order to correct the inaccurate recordings of lot number at the time of receipt. In other cases like price based lot management, lot conversion might be needed to enable promotions and other sales offers.

Serial Number Tracking

Serial Number tracking is often done in electronics products. Inventory is tracked as per the serial numbers to which they belong. The serial number tracking may be one of the following three types

vInbound tracking

vOutbound tracking

vCradle to Grave tracking

Country of origin tracking

Country of origin reporting is mandatory for certain goods in many countries. For this reason the inventory is maintained as the country of origin attribute and is tracked in inbound and outbound activities.

Cycle Counting

Inventory in a set of locations is counted to ensure the system quantity and the physical quantity are in sync with each other. In case of discrepancies an audit count (second count) can be trigged. The system quantity gets adjusted in accordance with physical quantity post cycle counting.

Replenishments

Filling up the pick-faces locations with adequate quantities from the buffer storage locations is called replenishment in warehousing operations. System calculates the replenishment quantities and then replenishment task is released to the floor. Operator goes to the buffer storage locations picks the inventory and deposits into the destination location, usually a pick-face location. There are various types of replenishments

1. Manual Replenishment
2. Top Off Replenishment
3. Triggered Replenishment
4. Emergency Replenishment