Top 4 Best Practices in Dimensioning of SKUs with Benefits

This best practice is about something called dimensioning of SKU’s in warehouse. Dimensioning of products is done by capturing the length width and height of the products. Boxes in which the products are being shipped are also dimensioned. These boxes are tracked as they are moved across with products capturing all the dimensions such as length, width, height, weight, volume and also the other attributes. The item master attributes of a product corresponds to the size of the products.

Some expensive electronic goods does not come with serial number tracking, and some items will be conveyable and others will be non-conveyable. And also some of the items are easy to sort and some are difficult. All these aspects will be focused as part of the dimensioning process, because that is the first time the product hits the dock door or product hits the DC.

None would have seen the physical nature of the product. The vendor would have probably sent an ASN and you automatically create an item master record for those items, so that when the ASN comes through and when the people in the receiving dock receives they can correctly slot in the product at the available space. This can be done by sending the product to the  dimensioning station where it will be typically scanned in a machine called Cubiscan. This helps you in high speed dimensioning of products, by having the products lined-up on the queue and the cubiscan scans it very fast.

It will measure the length, width, height and then also the weight and the volume. Along with that markups, flags can also be added mentioning whether it is a conveyable, non-conveyable, sortable, non-sortable, serial number tracking, etc.  And also any other flags that are relevant for your operations can be added. Here are the 4 areas in the warehouse where dimensioning can add value and helps in optimized use of resources. Dimensioning can help in a lot of places, for example on the inbound side it helps in the directed put-away process.

  1. Directed put-away is a process where you can automate the space booking without the user needing to find the space to stick the palette. The system should be thinking for the user and show them the place they can take it. This is all possible with dimensioning of the location on various aspects such as length, width, height, volume rate or restriction and then based on this item length, width, and height at the case level and at the pallet level, the system can check if this can fit in there and then recommend that location to the user.
  2. Even in the active location level you can take advantage of the dimensions and come up with mins and maxes for the location, based on the dimension as well as based on your order volume and sales history.
  3. Also on the outbound side it’s very helpful for cartonization because you want to it helps to put your order in the smallest box where all these items will fit. This is done to keep the transportation cost as low as possible. The system will pick the right box which is not too big. This process will decrease the transportation costs obviously because the parcel services such as FedEx, UPS they are going to charge a lot more if the boxes are big and if you can optimize and keep it in such a small box then you are going to save a lot of money in the transportation costs.
  4. Also at the time manifesting being done we can automate to some extent meet some thresholds. It will be very helpful if you do the dimensioning accurately and make sure that you know all these other additional flags are captured very well. Hopefully this best practice is useful to you.

Please share your thoughts and comments on dimensioning below.

Originally published at Smartgladiator.com on Jun 12, 2019.

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Jun 2019
By Puga SankaraLeave a comment
Author:
Puga Sankara
About:
Puga Sankara is the Founder, CEO of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. So far, Smart Gladiator LoadProof has been used to ship, receive, and scan more than 100 million boxes. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. SG LoadProof is also an Enterprise System of Record for Photos, videos and any other digital documents for your Supply Chain Network. A system of record (SOR) or source system of record (SSoR) is a data management term for an information storage system (commonly implemented on a computer system running a database management system) that is the authoritative data source for a given data element or piece of information. The need to identify systems of record can become acute in organizations where management information systems have been built by taking output data from multiple source systems, re-processing this data, and then re-presenting the result for new business use. In these cases, multiple information systems may disagree about the same piece of information. These disagreements may stem from semantic differences, differences in opinion, use of different sources, and differences in the timing of the extract, transform, and load processes that create the data they report against, or may simply be the result of bugs. The integrity and validity of any data set is open to question when there is no traceable connection to a good source, such as a known System of Record. Where the integrity of the data is vital, if there is an agreed system of record, the data element must either be linked to, or extracted directly from it. In other cases, the provenance and estimated data quality should be documented. The “system of record” approach is a good fit for environments where both: 1. there is a single authority over all data consumers, and 2. all consumers have similar needs Here, LoadProof is the System of Record for pictures and videos for all the entities in Supply chain who uses pictures and videos to track using any Supply Chain System infrastructure. 1. LoadProof provides accurate, thorough, complete, and latest information in pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply chain that is tracked. 2. LoadProof is the single authority on pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply Chain that is tracked 3. LoadProof doesn’t let any external system to copy the records being stored in it, which eliminates the data being duplicated in multiple places to preserve the data integrity and credibility. 4. LoadProof has a secured login procedure which lets only users with select level access to view the data and modify the records which helps in maintaining LoadProof is becoming the Industry Standard System for Photo & Video Docs for Supply Chain Smart Gladiator is located in ATDC - Advanced Tech Dev Center (tech Incubator) in Georgia Institute of Tech. Click for a demo - https://loadproof.com/apply Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at puga@smartgladiator.com or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com. [Read More]
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