Challenges and Solutions

Managing Data Precision and Integration

In modern warehousing, lot control is a formidable challenge, especially for industries dealing with short shelf-life products like pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, and fresh produce. The stringent demands of these industries require robust lot control functionality, primarily for maintaining data accuracy and integrity. Here, the goal is to manage lots and do so meticulously at the unit or case level, ensuring real-time tracking and avoiding spoilage.

This is vital for various critical requirements such as product recalls, optimizing space utilization, enhancing picking efficiencies, complying with audits and regulations, and integrating seamlessly with supplier and customer systems. The stakes are high, as any misstep in lot control can have ripple effects throughout the supply chain.

Enhancing Precision and Visibility

For accurate lot control, Accelalpha harnesses the robust functionality of Oracle WMS Cloud. Specifically, we leverage fields within the Item setup to incorporate vital information such as Lot Numbers, Expiration Dates, Shelf Life, Item Versions, and other relevant item characteristics. These details are integrated into various aspects of warehouse operations, including putaway rules, inventory allocation, picking rules, counting, and receiving.

This integration ensures enhanced visibility at every stage of the process, from receiving goods to fulfilling orders. Our clients can streamline their counting processes, optimize order fulfillment, and maintain compliance effortlessly with accurate lot information.

Navigating the Perishable Challenge

The challenges can be significant when it comes to expiration date control within warehousing, particularly in industries dealing with perishable goods or pharmaceuticals. The clock is always ticking, and precision is paramount. Key challenges include managing inventory rotation to prevent spoilage, dealing with product variability, ensuring date accuracy, providing date visibility, maximizing product shelf life, minimizing product recalls, and reducing waste.

Collaboration with suppliers is essential to minimize wastage. It's a delicate balancing act, where a misjudgment can result in financial losses, potential health risks, and legal ramifications.

Maximizing Product Lifespan

For product expiration date control, Accelalpha harnesses the power of Oracle WMS Cloud's standard functionality within the item setup. This strategic approach allows us to factor in critical elements like manufacturing dates, expiration dates, and product shelf-life when defining putaway and picking rules and managing inventory visibility and allocations.

By doing so, we help our clients maximize the lifespan of their products while minimizing the risk of perishable goods going to waste. The result is a warehouse environment where expiration dates are managed with precision, reducing the likelihood of product recalls and enhancing overall operational efficiency.

Tracking Every Step with Precision Serialization

Another warehousing challenge, involves assigning a unique identifier to each item, enabling precise tracking and tracing throughout the supply chain. This is particularly crucial in industries like pharmaceuticals, electronics, and luxury goods, where authenticity and traceability are non-negotiable. Counterfeiting must be prevented, product authenticity ensured, and efficient recalls made possible.

However, serialization comes with its own set of problems. Challenges include:

• Data management.
• Seamless integration with existing systems.
• Upgrading technology infrastructure.
• Maintaining data accuracy.
• Synchronizing data across the supply chain.
• Navigating recalls.
• Managing product variability.

It's a puzzle that requires careful coordination and the right tools to ensure the security and authenticity of products moving through the supply chain.

Achieving Precision Tracking and Traceability

Serialization presents unique challenges, but Accelalpha is well-equipped to tackle them head-on. We configure Oracle WMS Cloud to maintain the appropriate level of track and trace for serialized products. Products that demand full traceability throughout their warehouse journey, from receiving to every movement within the warehouse, are meticulously tracked.

Using License Plate Numbers (LPNs) enables efficient movement of serialized items, ensuring accurate tracking. Integration with Oracle Order Management guarantees that the required serial numbers are seamlessly communicated to the warehouse management system and allocated to the correct customer sales orders or manufacturing work orders. For items that only require serial numbers at the picking stage, typically for warranty purposes, Accelalpha allocates them at the item level.

Our solution also requires pickers to capture the serial number during the picking process, ensuring that each specific item shipped to a customer is accurately recorded. This level of precision in serialization enables our clients to maintain product authenticity, prevent counterfeiting, and efficiently manage recalls when necessary. With Accelalpha's expertise and Oracle WMS Cloud's powerful capabilities, the challenges of lot control, expiration dates, and serialization are met, ensuring that warehouses operate with unparalleled efficiency and accuracy.

Efficient Space Utilization

In warehousing, two challenges loom large: efficient space utilization and the quest for impeccable inventory traceability and visibility.

Picture your warehouse as a chessboard where every move counts. Efficient space utilization isn't just desirable; it's a critical factor that directly influences storage capacity, operational efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. However, this chessboard often comes with obstacles.

Limited space, a variety of product sizes, inefficient layout designs, complex storage rules, cross-docking demands, the intricate art of item slotting, and labyrinthine operational procedures all contribute to the challenge of optimizing space. To win this chess match, warehouses need smart strategies and innovative solutions.

Maximizing Every Inch

Efficient space utilization is no longer an elusive goal. With Oracle WMS and automation at the helm, warehouses can now unlock the true potential of their storage capacity. Innovative features within Oracle WMS Cloud, combined with automated systems, allow for meticulous planning and optimization of space. By dynamically adjusting storage rules and item slotting, warehouses can make the most of every square inch.

Moreover, Oracle WMS provides insights into cross-docking opportunities, enabling seamless product transfers without the need for storage. This not only reduces the physical footprint required but also accelerates order fulfillment. Inefficient layouts and poor industry practices become relics of the past as warehouses embrace a data-driven approach to space utilization.

Inventory Traceability and Visibility

Imagine being able to pinpoint the exact location and status of every product within your warehouse, in real time. The benefits are undeniable, but the path to achieving this level of precision is rarely straight and free of obstacles.

Manual processes, data silos that inhibit the flow of critical information, and the need for seamless integration between systems are some of the challenges faced in achieving effective inventory traceability and visibility. Legacy systems further complicate this task, as does the constant battle for data accuracy.

Additionally, there is a growing demand for real-time monitoring of product movements and the necessity of mobile accessibility for on-the-go decision-making. Scalability in warehouse operations is crucial, and harnessing the power of data analytics to make sense of the vast amounts of information adds to the complexity of the puzzle. Careful alignment of these elements is essential for successful inventory traceability and visibility.

Inventory Traceability & Visibility: A Clear Path Forward

Accurate inventory traceability and visibility have never been more achievable. Oracle WMS Cloud, augmented by automation, brings real-time monitoring and control to the forefront. Manual processes are replaced with automated data capture, reducing the risk of errors and data silos. The integration between systems is seamless, ensuring that critical information flows smoothly.

Legacy systems no longer hinder progress, as Oracle WMS Cloud provides a future-ready foundation for warehouse operations. Mobile accessibility enables on-the-go decision-making, giving warehouse managers the ability to monitor and manage inventory anytime, anywhere. Scalability becomes a non-issue, as the platform effortlessly adapts to growing demands. Data analytics tools empower warehouses to derive actionable insights, helping them make informed decisions to optimize operations.

In summary, these challenges - lot control, expiration date control, serialization, space utilization, and inventory traceability and visibility - are critical aspects of modern warehousing. Accelalpha, in partnership with the Oracle WMS Cloud application, provides innovative solutions to help warehouses overcome these challenges, ensuring that products move through the supply chain smoothly and securely.

Stay tuned for part two of this blog post series, where we will explain how Accelalpha, in collaboration with Oracle WMS Cloud, addresses the complexities of systems integration, mobility devices, automation, and change management. We address these challenges head-on and provide practical solutions that enable warehouses to adapt to change and thrive in an ever-evolving industry landscape.

In the meantime, contact us with your questions or schedule a consultation with an Accelalpha expert if you want to learn more.