Wholesale Distributors Enjoy Flexibility When Implementing Enterprise 21 Warehouse Management Functionality

Prior to moving to Enterprise 21, all of the distributors with whom we work were using some form of paper in their warehouse operations. Most of these organizations had their warehouse personnel writing on paper pick tickets as they went through the picking process and had the data electronically entered into their existing legacy systems hours later. Others may have been using a combination of paper and some scanning when they initially approached TGI.

In the case where there was manual recording of results, a paper pick ticket was printed and associated with each given sales order. Warehouse personnel would take the paper pick ticket, walk through the facility, and pick the items associated with that order. As the workers picked the order(s), they wrote the results of their efforts on the paper pick ticket, especially noting any places where there were discrepancies in the number of items picked or locations from which they picked. Some time later (and in many cases, much later), warehouse operators gave their hand-written picking results to an administrator for keying this information into their legacy system.

This paper-based process presented several challenges. First, there were delays between the time the physical transactions occurred and when those transactions were recorded into the system. Second, the one who recorded the data into the system was frequently not the same person who performed the physical transactions. In this case, there were opportunities for recording incorrect data when the written results were illegible and the data entry person made his or her best guess as to what was recorded. Because of these practices, the information in the computer system was inaccurate and generally not trusted. By moving to a real-time inventory system, such as Enterprise 21, where transactions are recorded in the system at the point and time in which they occur, inventory data becomes more accurate and timely.

In addition to improving inventory accuracy, distributors can take advantage of more efficient warehouse processes in Enterprise 21. One of the major advantages that organizations who ship a lot of small package deliveries can gain from Enterprise 21 is moving to a cart picking process. When doing cart picking, rather than performing picking on an order-by-order basis, warehouse personnel can perform a consolidated picking process for multiple orders concurrently, thus reducing labor consumed compared with picking each order on its own. Once a cart picking process is completed, the cart is moved to a packing location where the various orders on the cart are packed and prepared for shipment. Enterprise 21 can also enable warehouse operations to take advantage of other warehouse efficiencies including zone picking and wave picking.

The warehouse management software functionality in Enterprise 21 is fully-integrated with the entire Enterprise 21 ERP software application. Since this functionality is built into Enterprise 21, TGI customers do not have to try to keep separate systems in sync with each other or have to worry about what will occur to their ERP to WMS interface when they upgrade one of these systems.

A major advantage of Enterprise 21’s warehouse management system is that new TGI customers can elect to start their initial operations at system go-live at any point on the functionality continuum, from printing of paper pick tickets and manually recording the data to fully paperless operations. Over time, distributors can continue to streamline their operations and take advantage of more and more of the process efficiencies afforded by Enterprise 21.

By implementing the warehouse management functionality in Enterprise 21, distributors can improve inventory accuracy and gain operational efficiencies in a manner that can best be assimilated into their warehouse operations.