Receiving involves confirming orders, determining costs, and moving items efficiently to storage. Proper receiving includes good labeling and tracking vendor quality. The best receiving practices are cross-docking, scheduling, pre-receiving, and receipt preparation to minimize touches and costs.

1. Receiving
Putaway/Stocking
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2. Receiving
Is the process of confirming that you received what you ordered
Data collected from receiving determines what your accounting department
pays to your vendors
Success or failure in receiving determines what you pay for your receipts and
errors can be very costly
Ideally, the best receiving practice is to move items to their storage locations
with as few touches as possible.
Receiving provides the set up for all other warehouse activities. Problems
related to receiving reverberate throughout the entire operation.
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3. Receiving
Good receiving begins with good labeling
Get suppliers to correctly label product before it arrives
Make sure the labels can be read by both human and data capture devices
Some data you may want to include on the label
Shipper/supplier information (company name, telephone nbr, etc..)
Purchase order number
Pallet labels and quantities
Case labels and quantities
Product number and description
Package count
SKU
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4. Receiving
Vendor Quality and Compliance
How your vendors ship product to you strongly affects the fate of your receiving
operation
Regularly track your vendor’s performance. Some things to look for:
Wrong product
Wrong quantity
Defective or damaged product
Late/missed delivery dates
Using the wrong freight method or carrier
Incorrect Quantity
…
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5. Receiving
Four Receiving Practices:
1. Cross-Docking: Loads are received and sorted on the receiving dock and
then transported directly to an outbound dock. No storage required.
Generally no staging or inspection is required (big time saver)
Instead of multiple pickups (trucks), consolidate into one shipment
and ship to a regional local area for splitting into local shipments (big cost savings)
Effective method to receive and fill large orders quickly. (no storage required)
“short circuits” the standard putaway, replenishment, and picking processes
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6. Receiving
Four Receiving Practices:
2. Receiving Scheduling: Essentially cross-docking but based on a
timed schedule.
3. Pre-Receiving: Information about the incoming load is communicated
electronically prior to delivery.
Allows the inbound operation to pre-assign storage locations and reduces
receiving cycle time.
Save’s time
Better use of resources
Fewer touches
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7. Receiving
Four Receiving Practices:
4. Receipt Preparation: Act of preparing product to fill orders before orders come in.
Pre-apply labels/stickers
Pre-packing of product into case quantity increments
Reduces occurrence of split pallets or split cartons
Opportunity to move more product
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Putaway

8. Put Away/Stocking
The process of taking product from receiving and placing it in the most
appropriate storage location
The most logical first choice for put away is NOT to put product into a
storage location, but rather to ship it directly to a customer via cross-docking
Alternatives to cross-docking:
Note: There are two primary types of stocking locations
a. Reserve: for bulk storage and case/pallet picking
b. Active/forward pick: for less than case quantity picking
1. Locate directly to active (forward pick) picking locations
+ Minimizes future replenishment
+ Improves overall productivity
2. Locate near eventual active picking locations
+ Minimizes replenishment travel time
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9. Put Away/Stocking
3. To a location based on velocity: Consider the shipping volume
(quantity over time) of the product
A fast shipping product requires a reserve location close to its
forward pick location because it will replenish more frequently
A slow shipping product may be located further away from its forward
pick location because it will replenish less often.
4. Use a system: Use a warehouse management system (WMS) to direct putaway
Whenever possible, always try to put away into empty locations.
+ You get a free cycle count
+ If there is product still in an “empty” location you have just identified
an inventory issue AND recovered missing inventory
Always try to use the smallest location possible for the quantity on hand to
maximize your storage space
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10. Put Away/Stocking
What would you do?
1,000 units of a specific SKU just arrived. It is packaged 10 units
to a case/carton. If space is available, do you want to locate all 1,000 units/100
cases to a forward pick location?
If so, why?
If not, why?
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11. Put Away
Four Types of Put Away
Direct Put Away: Stocking directly to an active or reserve storage location.
Directed Put Away:
A Warehouse Management System (WMS) determines
where to send product for storage.
WMS identifies the location and quantity per location based on
a variety of factors (cube, demand, space available, size, pre-
programmed parameters, etc…)
Batch and Sequenced Put Away:
Sort inbound product for efficient put away
Sort product by type or some parameter then by location sequence
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12. Put Away
Four types of Put Away
Interleaving or Continuous Moves:
Perform both put away (stocking) with retrievals (picking)
After completing a put away, the stocker is directed to pull product
to fill an order or to re-warehouse.
Eliminates “deadheading” = coming back empty handed
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B

13. Put Away
Replenishment
The process of relocating reserve stock to forward pick locations. These can
either be loose pick or case pick locations.
Proper replenishment and timing is critical to the efficiency of the picking team.
The product must be located in the directed pick location before a picker reaches
the picking location.
Waiting for restock causes unwanted delays and/or extra handling.
The replenishment process can be time consuming. It needs to be properly
managed to balance picking efficiency gains and replenishment labor.
So, how do we determine how and when to replenish pick locations
and maximize our efficiencies?
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14. Put Away
Replenishment
Selecting the proper replenishment method:
1. Day or Wave Demand Replenishment:
Used to move only the quantity needed to satisfy the demand
for each wave (or day) to the forward pick locations
• Works well for unpredictable SKU demand or very slow moving SKUs
• Works well when pick locations are small and can only fit the
demand quantity
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15. Put Away
Replenishment
2. Opportunistic Replenishment:
Replenishment is based on two to four week forecasted quantities.
Minimizes the number of trips to both the reserve and forward pick
locations. Productivity increases.
• Not ideal if picking locations are:
Too small to handle additional volume
The forecast or demand is unpredictable
If there are a limited number of forward pick locations
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16. Put Away
Replenishment
3. Top Off or Lean Time Replenishment:
Utilize down time to fill each forward pick location to its maximum
cubic quantity.
• Used when the picking window is tight, in order to remove the
time-consuming effort required to complete the replenishment step
just prior to picking.
• Use only with faster moving SKUs when time allows.
4. Combination:
Utilizes a combination of the above methods. Is usually triggered by
a day’s demand or minimum quantity.
5. Emergency Replenishment: Used when a picker goes to a location that
lacks the correct product or quantity.
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