Adjust Carriers for Shipments based on Delivery Conditions

by | Jun 8, 2023 | 3PL Logistics, Mercurius IT

During the implementation phase, our consultants frequently ask whether 3PL Dynamics can effectively handle customer demands when delivering goods from your warehouse. It is crucial to have a warehouse management system (WMS) that can seamlessly address these demands and automate the necessary processes. In this article, we will explore how you can capture and process customer demands within your WMS using the standard functionality offered by 3PL Dynamics.

Capturing Delivery Demands: Defining and inputting these demands into your system is essential to incorporate customer demands into your operational workflow. In 3PL Dynamics, you can capture these demands through conditions specified on the customer card and addresses. These conditions cover various aspects, including carrier types and maximum heights your customers require. Additionally, you can differentiate between carriers sourced directly from your stock, and carriers picked through order picking. Altogether, there are four distinct conditions available to capture these demands.

The outcome of capturing these conditions is that they are automatically added to the shipment lines upon creation, whether manual input, via EDI integration, or through Excel imports.

Applying Conditions in the Order Pick Process: 3PL Dynamics provides several allocation methods to simplify your order pick process. For instance, you can determine whether the requested articles should be collected using complete carriers or if an order pick activity is required. When order picking is employed, a specific strategy enables you to consider the delivery demands while creating the order. This consideration is based on the conditions associated with each line.

Moreover, 3PL Dynamics can divide a shipment into multiple order pick assignments based on the requested carrier type, maximum height, or the number of articles per layer, all of which can be defined in your master data. This division allows the order picker to pick the articles on the appropriate carrier type efficiently. By incorporating conditions into the order pick process, you can proactively apply them and minimise additional work just before shipment.

Carriers Directly from Stock: When the allocation confirms that selected carriers can be collected directly from your stock without needing order pick activities, the carriers can be gathered as usual. Once all the carriers for the shipment are collected, a status change or scanning function verifies if the carriers meet the conditions specified on the lines. If all the conditions are not met, 3PL Dynamics automatically generates a warehouse activity to adjust the carriers. A corresponding action code is applied depending on the specific conditions that are not met. Your consultant can customise the names of these codes. Generally, this activity is categorised into the following four warehouse activities:

1. Re-stack: Requires stacking within the same carrier group but using a different carrier type, such as transferring from Chep Block to Plastic Block without tilting.
2. Tilt: Requires stacking within the same carrier group but using a different carrier type, allowing tilting, such as transferring from Chep Block to Plastic Block.
3. Stack off: Requires reducing the carrier’s height if it exceeds the maximum allowed. The carrier type remains unchanged.
4. Switch: Requires transferring the goods to a different carrier type that belongs to a distinct carrier group, for example, from Chep Block to Euro. If the maximum height is reached, this switch is automatically implemented.

Warehouse Activities and Shipment Linkage: The collected carriers are removed from the shipment’s detail lines once the warehouse activities are created. However, they are still linked to the shipment, ensuring they are unavailable for other orders. The warehouse activities generate new detail lines based on the modified contents of the carrier and, potentially, new carrier numbers.

By utilising the comprehensive functionalities of 3PL Dynamics, you can effectively capture and process customer demands within your
More information?

Do you want to start working with delivery demands? Or do you want to learn more about how to apply this functionality in your current process? Please do not hesitate to contact us; our consultants are happy to help.

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