Packing operations or confirmation is performed on completion of the picking and/or VAS operations at a SKU level.
Certain pick strategies including "sort while pick" and "pick and pass" combine packing activity along with the pick. The pack process in this scenario is closing of the carton after insertion of appropriate material.
The pack process in other pick strategies including "pick and sort" is performed at the completion of pick of the entire wave or shipment.
The packing process captures additional information like serial numbers, ship by date and weight. Serial number is captured during the pack process only if the warehouse does not capture serial number as an inventory attribute. The automatically determines the weight of a container using the attributes at an item level and the corrugation weight. However, it is necessary for some warehouses to capture actual weight at a carton level.
The packing process ensures customer compliance. Packing is done into a container. The supports the ability to assign a unique license plate number or a SCM label to a container. In addition, a container may go through further VAS operations to meet additional customer requirements. Instructions to the customer or carrier compliance requirements like pallet height restrictions and stacking restrictions are provided.
Documentation is provided during the packing step based on the customer compliance or as per business process configuration. For example, customer compliance requirements to have packing list for each carton or only for the last carton.
The packing process for a -containerized carton directs the user to pack contents of the cartons. Visibility is provided to a user to the expected contents of a carton. A warehouse that choose to manually pack cartons after the pick operation is referred to as 'post-pick containerization', which records the license plate number and contents being packed at stations. A packer is informed of completion of the container packing or of an exception immediately. In the manual packing process, a packer informs the system of completion.
The also supports the feature of packing at a shipment level. A shipment is sorted into multiple pallets or cartons and unique license plate numbers or SCM labels are applied. The shipment is considered as packed upon user confirmation of the labels associated with it. However, the contents of each individual carton are not known.
A single item broken into multiple physical containers is also supported in this manner. For example, a table where the legs and individual table are physical shipped as two or more containers. The ensures that the number of containers associated with the item is packed.
Freight charges for parcel shipments are placed at an individual container level. LTL and TL shipments are typically charged for their weight. Individual standard cases are placed along with other items into a larger carton or multiple cartons are shrink-wrapped together to optimize on the total charge for parcel shipments. This is referred to as "over-pack".
Quality processes to ensure picking and packing accuracy and customer compliance are enforced through business process configuration or through ad-hoc processes. The QC operator marks a container if the check fails.
The provides procedures for directed building of pallets by associating an outbound pallet to the shipment. A packer indicates when a pallet is complete and associates a new pallet with the shipment. A packer is instructed to place a container for a shipment into the appropriate pallet.
The license plate or the SCM label associated to the pallet allows subsequent movements on the scan of the label, into the trailer or to the appropriate shipping lane.
A shipment container or pallet is passed through a manifesting station in the case of pallet shipments or to a shipping lane awaiting trailer loading.
Documentation required in the inside of a container or on the outside of a pallet or container is automated through the raising of appropriate events to the application’s print infrastructure.