Gilmours Inward Goods

Operations Management Concerns Surrounding the Inward Goods at Gilmours
Dmitry Yakimenko

Introduction
Inward Goods operations are an integral part of Gilmours daily work.
Each and every product sitting on the shelf in Cash and Carry Department arrives through the Inwards Goods.
The process of receiving of goods should be put in the most right and efficient way.

Work Flow Chart

Enter phone delivery requests from supplier
The representative may not know the order number or may tell the wrong order number – as there is no validation check.Also the procedure may be time consuming
Recommendation:
Automation of Booking Procedure

Enter phone delivery requests from supplier

Delivery vehicle arrives/ Unloading the vehicle
Truck may come at time different to the arranged one. In actual fact no one check the arrival time with the arranged time.
Due to the failure to come in time or due to the delay in unloading several trucks may come on the yard at the same time. As the result the work load of the Inward Goods may be very uneven - occurrence of the long queue on the public road which leads to the yard.

Delivery vehicle arrives/ Unloading the vehicle
Recommendations:
To monitor the arrival time against the booking schedule and do the statistic of arrivals for different orders and different trucks – explanatory work with suppliers;
Send the truck back or reschedule its arrival for the later time;
The implementation of automatic booking system.

Receiving the load with the help of handheld barcode scanners
The product is not in the PO (purchase order). Time consuming visit to the buyers’ office to set up the issue (5-20 minutes);
No indication whether the pallet was scanned or not – unscanned pallet may be transferred to storage area;
Handheld barcode scanners often frozen up during the receiving process. No efficient system to report the bugs;
Receiving of loose pallets – time consuming procedure.

Recommendations
The product is not in PO:
Use an email to send the requests to the buyer;
To configure SAP to send the request from the handheld scanner directly to the buyer.
Absence of indication for scanned pallets:
Pocket size sticky labels of the following format
Pallet scanning is completed.
Ready for collection

Recommendations
Freezing barcode scanners:
Regular service of the equipment (preventative maintenance) and update equipment on the expiry of the service life;
To examine the system of maintenance reports where every maintenance request is assigned with the order number;
Loose pallets:
To order to ensure the turnover of goods not less than 4 weeks. Establish the lower level of stock on hand.

Receiving of Goods Procedure

Check each product against the delivery docket
Manukau:
Never put the amount of goods into the system before they manually count each item. While checking the product they crossing out the lines which are actually received.
Mt Roskill:
‘Blind’ scanning. While receiving the goods Inwards people scan each item they observe on the pallet. After scanning is complete they check the list of actually received goods printed by SAP.

Stamp the order
Manukau:
When receiving is done, order is checked with SAP and all issues are fixed the Inwards worker stamps the order document with the date when the order was received.
Mt Roskill:
No stamp and all complete orders stapled with the original delivery docket from supplier regardless of issues occurred during the receiving (under/over supply)

Stamp the order
Mt Roskill

Manukau
Stacks of documents

Write down order information into Summary Sheet
Distinguish feature of Manukau receiving process is an existence of special Summary Sheet for the information about all the orders in the following format:
[CRN/None – Name of Supplier – Order Number – Number of Lines received – Number of lines MOS].

Numerical data for Mt Roskill and Manukau branches

Numerical data for Mt Roskill and Manukau branches
The number of pallets per person in Mt Roskill is considerably less than in Manukau - the workforce in Mt Roskill branch is underutilised .
Due to the longer working hours of Manukau branch, one Manukau Inwards worker spend more time for receiving a pallet than Inwards worker at Mt Roskill.
Due to the huge size of the inwards zone at Mt Roskill, the area per a pallet there is more than 4 times bigger than in Manukau.

Human resources
Recommendations:
Best practice seminar and trainings. Conduct one off seminar on best practices. This seminar may involve the lecture of SAP people about the usage of the system. To conduct the training on cohesion and team spirit.
Exchange of the staff from different branches. Temporarily swap people from similar departments of different branches during the sharing experience program.
Maintain a multicultural environment within one branch.

Innovative ideas should know no boundaries! Thank you =)
Dmitry Yakimenko