Putting Away Inventory

DEACOM offers two options to assist users with putting away inventory in a logical fashion, based on pre-defined criteria or constraints. Both are optional features and are available in the WMS Application via the Move Inventory and Receive PO transactions. These options are:

  • Zone Put Away - Concept by which the system uses the default Location specified on a Part's Item Master to find all zones with this Location within the Facility, get Locations within these Zones, and suggest a put away location within this list when moving or receiving inventory via the WMS application. This option is controlled by the “Zone Put Away” Item Master > Properties tab flag and the “Default Location” specified on the Item Master General tab. This option does not utilize or require the "Capacity" or "Capacity Unit" fields on the Location record.
  • Directed Put Away - Concept by which the system uses Put Away Rules in conjunction with the “Put Away” button on the WMS Move Inventory form to show the user only those Locations that have capacity available to store the Lot being moved/received. This functionality was designed for a company that wanted to make sure that any user moving inventory throughout the warehouse was suggested with the first, closest Location available in the warehouse. This process would ensure that warehouse operators would walk or drive the minimal distance to put away or retrieve a Lot. This option is controlled by the "Automatic Directed Put Away" flag in Inventory > Options > WMS tab.

Configuration

To enable Zone Put Away, the following must be configured:

  • Items - Must be flagged as active, have the "Zone Put Away" flag checked on the Properties tab, and a Default Location entered on the General 1 tab.
  • Locations and Zones - Must be configured and linked together using the warehouse hierarchy.

To enable Directed Put Away, the following must be configured:

  • Items - Must be flagged as active, have the "Unit Cube" field populated with the cubic feet of the product, and have a Default Location entered on the General 1 tab.
  • Locations - Must have their "Capacity", "Capacity Unit", and "Location Sequence" fields populated.
  • Units of Measure - Required to support the "Capacity Unit" field. The recommended UOM for unit capacity is cubic feet with a "Capacity" set in terms of total cubic feet available.
  • Put Away Rules - Should be configured for each warehouse based on company practices and the put away location suggestion logic.

Process

Moving inventory using WMS

To put away via the WMS Move Inventory transaction:

  1. Log on to the WMS Application.
  2. Select the Move Inventory transaction.
  3. Scan or type in the Part number.
  4. Click the "Find" button to select the Source Location and what lot should be moved.
  5. Select a lot and specify the desired quantity to move.
  6. Navigate to the "New Loc Type" field and select the Location Type" with the Locations that would have the capacity (this must be completed in order for putaway to work). Specifically, in the pick list, select the Location Type where the capacity locations were setup/configured.
  7. Click the "Putaway" button. Putaway logic is as follows: once the "Putaway" button is clicked, the system will start with the Default Location on the Item Master to see if there is enough space in that Location to store the lot. If there is not enough space, the system will check each Location beginning with the next Location sequence number listed after the Default Location. For example, if the Default Location has a "Location Sequence" of 50 and there is not enough room, the system will look for a Location sequence of 51 and so on until a Location with sufficient room is found.
  8. The system will populate the suggested Location on the form. At this point users may continue with the move process as normal.

Labeling Purchase Order receipts during put away

Traditionally when receiving a Purchase Order on the WMS application, users needed to specify the material receipt location before being able to print a lot label. Depending on each companies’ individual needs, this is sometimes okay, but not always. For some, this causes inventory to pile up on the dock before being able to Move the Inventory to another location once the entire PO is received. DEACOM has come up with two solutions for this to simplify the PO receipt process while still supplying the necessary labels.

  • "Print" button - Available to the Receive PO form in WMS.
  • "Pending" inventory status - Occurs when WMS is being used to receive Purchase Orders.

Using the "Print" button

Available to the Receive PO form in WMS, the "Print" button allows the user to print a PO lot label before finalizing the location committed to the system during receipt. This option is useful in situations where the user often does not know the location in which the material will be placed until they have found the available slot in the warehouse. The process is defined below:

  1. This "Print" button should do everything that the "Next" button does with the exception of clearing the form for the next receipt. In other words, it should push the pending receipt record to dtfifo so that a label may be generated. The label printed here should be the PO Label as specified in System > Options > Part Forms tab or the Item Master Part Forms tab, if a Part Form override is specified.
  2. Once the label is generated the user will specify the actual Location in which the material is put away in the warehouse.
    1. Note: To finalize the receipt on this dtfifo record, the "Next" button will be used as it normally would otherwise. At this point, the system will update the already created dtfifo record with the new Location Type and Location specified by the user. The system will not to insert a new record in the table at this time, but instead update the current dtfifo record being received.
  3. When a value has been entered in the "To Master Lot" field and the "Receive as Master Lot" option is selected, the system will print a Master Lot Label, instead of a PO Label, when choosing the Print PO Label option.

Using the "Pending" status

Within DEACOM there are many Inventory statuses such as WIP, Staging, Reserved, Quarantine etc… One such Inventory status is “Pending” which occurs during the time a WMS user is receiving a Purchase Order on the scanner. Each Lot received is marked as "Pending" until the Purchase Order receipt is completed and saved, committing the material to Inventory from Pending. For the WMS application, it is possible to perform a Move Inventory transaction on material within this Pending status.

Because the Location needs to be specified to hit Pending status as well as print a lot label, the operator unloading the truck will simply receive the inventory to the “Dock” or whatever Location is appropriate. Another operator would then come up and scan the pallet label using the Move Inventory transaction. Because the inventory is still Pending receipt it will be locked to Pending status on the scanner but with the ability to specify and move the inventory to any Location within the warehouse. The idea here is that while one operator is unloading the truck and printing labels, another is moving the inventory to its final resting place in the warehouse.