PICKING AND PACKING
materialhandlingupdate
Time for some
shelf examination?
If your DC serves retail outlets, you’re probably getting more requests
for pre-assembled orders to cut down on the labor needed to stock store shelves.
The question is, how do you do that without blowing your own budget?
IT USED TO BE THAT A DISTRIBUTION CENter’s main concern was getting orders out the
door as quickly and efficiently as possible. What
happened after the truck left the dock was not its
problem.
Not so anymore. In many retail companies
today, the focus has shifted to improving efficiencies at the other end of the supply chain—
that is, in activities like unloading and putaway
that take place after the truck reaches the store.
As a result, DCs are increasingly being asked to
provide “store ready” shipments, with merchandise packed and loaded with an eye toward
streamlining the receiving and putaway processes. That might mean, for example, loading
orders into trucks in a particular sequence or
shipping more mixed-case pallets, with items
that are sold in the same department grouped
together—say, dog and cat food, with no cleaning products layered in between. “It’s all about
