Material Handling Equipments and changing landscape in Warehousing industry

In modern era, the activity of moving the material from one place to another has transformed from mundane physical work to sophisticated technology driven one. Material handling equipments are changing the world considerably. This transformation is largely driven by a series of necessity driven inventions, having its roots with probably the greatest invention of mankind, the wheel. This change is felt largely in supply chain management area of the modern business especially the warehousing field.

Traditionally man goes to material and move it from one place to another with various material handling equipments. This scene is getting changed. Technology has transformed this activity to a state where man to goods is reducing and leaving way to goods to man movements. Be it the automated storage and retrieval systems, conveyors, WCS, the options are plenty to achieve this.

Even drones are getting extensively used in modern warehouses to perform various activities like identifying and cycle counting of goods in a warehouse. As we read this there might be a possibility that yet another equipment has been invented in the field of warehousing. The change is real, rapid and robust.

Material handling equipments can be classified into four different genres.

• Storage equipments like Racks, Bins, Totes and others
• Man to goods equipments like Pallet jacks, Automated Guiding vehicles and others
• Goods to man equipments like WCS, conveyors, AS/RS and others
• Locating and moving enablers like Pick to light, Voice enablers, Hand held terminals, Barcode readers and others.

The industry is rapidly moving towards goods to man equipments. It has lot of pros and cons. Pros include

• Increased throughput
• Lesser chances of manual errors
• Enables easier warehousing operations especially packaging, sortation and others.

These goods to man MHEs comes with some cons as well.

• Often they are rigid and pose difficulties while change processes within a warehouse once they are installed.
• Comes with significant initial investment costs.
• Lacks flexibility in warehouse layout changes.
• At times prone to instable system integration with WMS applications.

In conclusion, technology changes are inevitable and here to stay forever. Let’s keep changing and evolving over a period of time.

Web Visibility

Top Priority of Logistics managers:

Information visibility is the top priority to logistics managers across the globe. Visibility on what is happening across the supply chain is the need of the hour in supply chain management. Vendor needs information on order pipelines in order to produce goods in sufficient amount. Logistics partners needs visibility to plan for the logistics activities. Carriers need information on how many trucks or containers needed and when they are needed. Retailer needs information on the stock levels in his warehouse as well as the inbound quantities to have just in time processes and systems. Customer needs information on at what stage the order is now and when it will be delivered. Thus information exchange is the key in supply chain management.

Supply chain and web visibility:

Web Visibility helps all the participants in a supply chain to receive and make use of information whenever they need it. It is like providing a glass-like pipeline of inventory information across the supply chain. Stake holders need to have access to internet only to get these information. Web visibility is generally in the form of reports and online data maps. SLAs, inventory levels, events and others were displayed in the form of reports.

Web visibility can be for real time inventory levels or for historic information. Real time information enables easier planning and execution, reduces information silos, reduces lead time and costs in a supply chain. Usually information flow happens in the reverse direction of supply chain. But in real time web visibility the information exchange happens simultaneously to various stake holders.

Information like order information, production information, product quality tracking, Advanced ASNs planning and delivery becomes simple and easily accessible in case of web visibility. Integration of upstream and downstream systems is essential in order to have quality data which can be used as useful information to plan and execute various activities in the supply chain. 

 

SCEM & Web visibility:

Supply chain event management and web visibility goes hand in hand. Events are triggered when an exception is anticipated or occurred. These events need to be shared to the appropriate stake holders and web visibility enables it. It is more important that how we use these data, infer the information and take appropriate action upon such events. In some cases SCEM and WMS are different applications and in other cases they are integrated in the same suite of application, for example RP WMD and Manhattan’s WMOS.

Web visibility is all about

• What data need to be collected
• When they need to be collected and how to present it in meaningful data sets
• Who need to access those data and what controls needed
• How to infer and act on those data elements

Yard and Dock Management - An Overview

Yard Management:

In a high turnover warehouse there will be a number of yard locations for the vehicles to be temporarily parked and kept ready for the shipments and receiving. Managing Yards becomes difficult as the turnover keeps increasing and handling the yard management effectively will bring in significant reduction in transportation costs. A trailer can be moved across the yards depending on the operational needs.

Dock management:

Docks are the locations where the vehicles are staging for receiving and shipping. Dock door handling is dynamic in a full turnover warehouse. Receiving and Shipping dock doors can be different or the same dock doors can be used for both depending on the warehouse design.

Appointment Scheduling:

Scheduling the appointment for the inbound and outbound vehicles is a herculean task if managed improperly. Yards and dock doors are listed with the timelines of their availability and appointments for them are created. Receiving and shipping time lines are properly analyzed and appointments are made so that there is no clash in vehicles getting docked into them.

Yard Management System:

A yard management system (YMS) is a software system designed to oversee the movement of trucks and trailers in the yard of a manufacturing facility, warehouse, or distribution center. YMS provides real-time information on the location of trailers in the yard and allows yard employees to move trailers from staging to docks to fill orders in an efficient manner.

YMS is often used in conjunction with warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS). It may also have radio frequency identification (RFID) technology built in for faster and more accurate tracking.

 

Advantages of having a good YMS:

• Reduces trailer wait time
• Dramatically improves labor productivity
• Maximizes fleet utilization, planning & forecasting
• Eliminates costly moves

Synchronized Yard Management:

Managing the appointments and docks & yards require dynamic inbound logistics management. The carrier scheduling can be online. Dock doors, yards and appointments need to be managed in a synchronized way in order to gain maximum efficiency. Dock Appointment Scheduling is a collaborative solution that enables shippers, carriers and consignees to schedule dock door appointments. It streamlines the dock appointment process by distributing the responsibility for scheduling warehouse deliveries or pickups to carriers and suppliers. By ensuring all supply chain partners are involved in the process and have visibility into requested, scheduled and rescheduled dock appointments, the YMS solution optimizes receiving operations for inbound shipments and helps coordinate outbound pickups.