Three Ways to Optimize Dock-to-Stock Processes

Three Ways to Optimize Dock-to-Stock Processes

BY: KEVIN LEDVERSIS, NEWCASTLE SYSTEMS / DATE: 01/14/2021 / TOPICS: SHIPPING & RECEIVING, WAREHOUSING & DISTRIBUTION, PRINT AUTOMATION

Like most logistics operations, yours might point to “receiving” as the main starting point in your operation. Either because it’s a process that often begins earlier in the day with the overnight arrival of trucks delivering products from all parts of the country, or simply because it’s the point in which materials enter your facility thus setting the stage for all other processes.

Either way, optimizing your dock-to-stock process is critical if you want to survive in the age of Amazon – when you’re competing against robots, drones, and same-day shipping. A recent report from American Productivity and Quality Center found that top performers in dock-to-stock get the task done in just under four hours, while the bottom performers took 48 hours.

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That’s a difference of 44 hours, translating to lost time and revenue for the company. If you can save time by increasing efficiencies, employees will be freed up to focus on other tasks that will drive ROI. But where do you start? How do you improve your dock-to-stock results? Here are three ways you can optimize dock-to-stock processes.

Reduce Movement

A warehouse employee takes countless unnecessary steps throughout the day. While it may sound like great exercise, it’s less ideal for warehouse efficiency. It’s estimated that each step a warehouse associate takes can cost the company 3 to 4 cents. While 3 to 4 cents per step may not seem like much, if each worker is taking tens of thousands of steps per day, the cost adds up.

During a recent warehouse tour, one supervisor told me his employees walk seven to nine miles every day. If they are walking that many steps a day, something is very wrong, and it’s likely an inefficient layout or process that is causing all of that motion.

One area where motion is a major problem is in the typical receiving process where operators pull paperwork from a load, walk to a PC, look up the PO, walk back and verify counts, walk back to the PC, print labels, and then walk back to apply the labels. There can be as much as 50% waste in this process. To get to world-class dock-to-stock times, it’s about minimizing non-value-added activity; walking is low hanging fruit that can removed by leveraging carts and mobile solutions to allow for label printing at the point of activity.

Minimize Paperwork

By eliminating paperwork, leveraging print automation, and relying on mobile technology, companies can effectively reduce dock-to-stock cycle time, reduce labor by as much as $10,000 per worker, eliminate improperly labeled products and minimize inaccurate inventories.

RF scanning is vital in the receiving process because wireless technology will limit the number of steps associates are taking to various areas throughout the warehouse and reduces inaccuracies in reporting. It frees them up for other tasks pertinent to workflow. Rolling out RF scanning doesn’t take long, and the added sophistication will go a long way in limiting time and paper waste.

There are a lot of companies that want to go paperless, but they still lack an automated system for inventory management. Once those firms realize that they can effectively reduce the amount of time it takes to unload a trailer and put it away to stock, they begin to see the true advantages of making that happen on a regular basis. That, in turn, pushes them to explore more mobile options scanning and printing.

To improve speed while still maintaining accuracy, humanitarian aid organization Direct Relief recently moved to paperless processing in its warehouse.

“In the first month, we had an increase of 40 percent of the number of batches that we received,” said Thomas Tighe, president and CEO, Direct Relief. “We did them more accurately and in 20 percent less time. We’ve also been able to cut the time it takes to pack and ship by almost 70 percent due to the increased efficiency.”

Check out the new infographic from TEKLYNX, Newcastle, and Zebra on 7 Ways to Eliminate Waste in Your Labeling Process.

Minimize Handling

When it comes to world-class receiving and put away, one of the general principles is to try to minimize the number of handling steps throughout the process. 

• Design – Design of the warehouse certainly plays a role. It’s important to conveniently locate stations close to the dock, ensuring each product coming from the supplier takes the minimum cost flow path. Mobile labeling stations and processes can be set up for the ability to scan a work order, which triggers the print jobs of corresponding documentation, so labels can be printed automatically at convenient locations. When you have processes close together, you reduce handling, footsteps, waste and most importantly time.
  
  
• Assign receiving docks – If you utilize a concept called pre-receiving (assigning an incoming product to a specific dock door) then you will know where exactly the inbound pallets will be in the warehouse. Take the time to assign each inbound truck to the dock door that minimizes the processing time for that inbound truck. That little simple step may be worth an increase of receiving productivity of 50 percent.
  
  
• Schedule activity – Schedule all of the resources to accomplish receiving tasks. It’s about being proactive; not reactive.
  
  
• Minimize delay – Companies need to be able to receive those pallets quickly, and the best time to do that is right when they come off the trailer. Leveraging carts for mobile workstations helps to eliminate walking to a stationary printer for labeling and allows for materials to be processed at the dock.
  
  
• Sticker dots – One way to track touches is to put a sticker dot on a product for each touch before inventory. This will help managers track and add in efficiency measures. Achieving a strong dock-to-stock ratio is all about reducing steps and touches. Handling a product multiple times is a liability to any warehouse.
  
  
• Quality control – Maintain a quality control group in the warehouse to monitor put away accuracy – just like they would be monitoring picking accuracy, shipping accuracy and inventory accuracy. This way mistakes are caught early in the process, instead of late in the process when it’s difficult to do something about it. Another opportunity for quality control is to monitor the damage rate and put away. Oftentimes, because of the excess handling, a good portion of the damage may occur in the put away process.

Warehouse and logistics professionals have a tough task. The industry is changing, and customer demand for speed has never been greater. By reducing movement, paperwork, and touches, you will improve the flow of the warehouse and reach true dock-to-stock optimization.

Check out these resources from TEKLYNX, Newcastle, and Zebra:

To learn more how you can create efficiencies through the use of mobile carts in your logistics visit www.newcastlesys.com.