The basic warehouse operations are storage and movement. The role of the warehouse is to provide secure storage of goods and optimise throughput of goods while minimising costs. The movement of goods can be broken down to the following phases:
- Goods received
- Goods transferred to stock (put away)
- Storage
- Goods selected for issue/use (picking)
- Packing and despatch
Goods Receipt
The first operation in a warehouse is the receiving of goods. The goods receipt process can be sub-divided into a number of steps as illustrated in Figure 1:
Figure 1: The Goods Receipt Process
- Validate – Check goods and paperwork to confirm that the goods have been ordered
- Book-in – Record delivery in Inventory Management System (IMS)
- Identify – The identity and quantity of the goods received should be checked to ensure that they match with what has been ordered.
- Unload – The goods should now be unloaded and either delivered to the storage location or to an inspection area within the warehouse.
- Transaction – As soon as the goods have been unloaded, an inventory receipt transaction needs to be processed. For items that are bar-coded, this can be achieved by simply scanning the product bar code. The result of the scan will be passed via to the inventory management system.