5 Best Practices in Optimizing the SKU Velocity in Your Warehouse

This post is about the best practices to track the velocity of your SKUs which is important to know as a DC manager and as a director of DC. As a supply chain inventory manager of your supply chain you got to know what are your A SKU’s, what are your B SKU’s, what are your C SKU’s. A SKUs are the fastest moving SKUs and the B SKUs are the moderately moving SKUs and C SKUs are the slow moving SKUs. The last thing you want to know is how to slot your A SKUs, slotting all the way far at the back of the DC will make the operators to walk more. That’s why it’s very important to know your fast moving SKUs like A+ SKUs, which is even faster. There are even more fast moving SKUs that could be a seasonal phenomenon that happens only during the peaker holiday season, where someone is ordering a specific SKU like a not very popular toy or a very popular gift item for all their friends and family.

Recently we had a customer that went live, there was a Rachael Ray’s Evoo bottle which was one of the fast moving SKUs.

  1. So when you know that this SKUs are fast moving, then you stay on top of it and make sure that the PO’s are in place to get those SKUs to be manufactured so you have that product in the DC all the time. You will never run out of that SKU and the last thing as any retailer or any distributor or as a business you don’t want a dissatisfied customer who came to buy it and they weren’t able to buy it and they went somewhere else because of the bad experience and you lost a customer. That’s why it’s very important to stay on top of these SKUs and it’s very easy to determine from your WMS, as it would automatically track it.
  2. The WMS does have the ability to track it or all you have to do is take your sales history and filter SKU quantity. That said it’s very simple spreadsheet and do it, doesn’t mean though you’d be able to see well. There will be SKUs that you sold the most and then the SKUs you sold the least. Now you will be able to know ABC with which you can categorize and then again if you run the same report for a peak season you can figure out easily your A SKUs then there might be some A+ SKUs. Also you there would be some kind of aging report, which tells about what is sitting in your DC from one time they thought it is moving.
  3. Have your inventory manager to make sure that the inventory is in sync between the host and between the ERP and between the WMS and within the WMS. The inventory manager must be able come out with different inventory buckets and locate those inventory with accuracy and makes sure that the cyclic counting is done correctly so your inventory count is clearly visible. From an auditing perspective you have to know whatever inventory that you have in your DC needs to be accurately reflected in the books because only then the quarterly financials can be accurate and also the yearly financials can be accurately released.
  4. The last thing you want is some SKUs sitting there without selling for a long time and you have to find that, it could be like E, F SKUs so if that’s not at all moving for whatever reason so you have to stay on top of this.
  5. The other important thing to keep in mind, once you figure out this A, B, and C you should get your slotting and optimize, that means you shouldn’t want your people working walk a lot of distance for areas just that doesn’t make any sense.

So the A SKU need to be slotted close to the packing station or closer to where you know the shipping process is performed whereas the D and the E could be farther away because you know you don’t want people walking as those SKUs sell less so people are going to walk less distance when this SKUs are slotted far.

But imagine the A SKUs slotted out in there and they’re walking a lot right that’s the last thing you want and have you to know the slotting optimization plan, that we’ll talk about it as a separate topic that’s something to keep in mind. Having a good slotting program in place is important and helps to pay attention to these A, B, and C SKUs. When you know it’s moving fast and you got to make sure that the replenishments are ready for these A SKUs.

It’s moving fast and you know these are the bin locations that are going to run out of inventory pretty fast so the replenishers can keep an eye on those as well with the mindset of “hey I know this Isle is full of A SKUs and I gotta stay on top of this. You could also dedicate a replenisher if you have multiple replenishers, you could have dedicated replenisher for that aisle and get the replenishments proactively done so that it will never run out of inventory for that SKU velocity and for those bin locations.

You can even dedicate a workforce for the A, A+ SKUs when doing the peak period to fulfill that popular gift, a popular toy that became so popular and you could temporarily have the really big location that would be right next to the packing station very close to the hub where the carton is getting packed, you could have that there and so that the people are not walking much distance.

If you have single orders where people are just buying this one item in a lot of quantity you could fulfill those in bulk as well. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to these A, B, and C SKUs and it’s important to have your inventory manager stay on top of this at any point of time. You called them and asked them for a report they should be able to tell “hey these are our A SKUs, these are our B SKUs, and these are C SKUs, and then A+ SKUs.

They must also be able to tell “hey I’m doing great, I got replenishments ready in place and I got locations fully replenished so people can pick without waiting, similarly for B and C also and I’m not too worried, I know what I’m tracking”, so this is something to think about in order to optimize your facility throughput and please share your thoughts and let us know your comments below.

Originally published at Smartgladiator.com on May 9, 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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