Warehouse tour part 2 – Onwards and upwards!

22. Nov 2017 | Technology + Products

In my last blog post, you already learned a fair bit about our fast- and slow-movers, the warehouse management system, and Incoming and Outgoing Goods. However, that barely scratches the surface of what our Logistics Department has to offer! In this post, you’ll be introduced to more fascinating areas of our warehouse that we simply can’t do without.

Stop 2 – Outgoing Goods: Packaged goods shipments

Packaged goods shipments make up the largest share of our overall shipment volume. It’s not rare to have 30-40 pallets in one single customer order. At the packing stations, master data are used to compare the target and actual weight values. This is important, as it ensures that incorrect items aren’t shipped by mistake. As soon as everything is in order, the green light is given and the package can be approved. Finally, the corresponding shipment documents are printed and affixed to the package. In 2016, thanks to the 40-something employees here, we were able to ship around 280,000 packages and over 24,000 pallets containing more than 1.7 million picked items to our customers. That’s no mean feat!

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We are able to give our customers specific package data with a DESADV message at the package level. The customer is then able to use this to process their incoming deliveries efficiently. DESADV is incidentally short for “despatch advice”. That’s how we make things easier for everyone!

 Warehouse tour station 3 – Packaging

Stop number four on our warehouse tour is the packaging area, which is situated on Weiskircher Weg in Heusenstamm. Here, a team of 13 members of staff works to make assortments and kits out of individual components, not to mention performing a wide range of repackaging activities. We then bring the finished items back to our main warehouse.

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Stop 4 – The Logistics Control Centre

Our Logistics Control Centre takes care of warehouse storage. New items are assigned to the corresponding storage spaces and checked for discrepancies. If necessary, we undertake stock posting, produce inventory documents and much more. One particularly important task is permanent item allocation: in other words, where an item should ideally be stored in the warehouse as a result of its popularity. To put it simply: if we need an item often, we need to be able to access it quickly and easily, and vice versa. This preliminary work is essential for ensuring efficient warehouse storage and stock-picking. As a result, the Control Centre is an important logistical interface and streamlines processes enormously.

And that brings us to the end of our Herth+Buss warehouse tour. Now you can see how many individual interfaces there are in our Logistics Department and how they are all interlinked. Each department is reliant on every other, which guarantees that processes run smoothly.

I hope you’ve enjoyed peeking behind the scenes…
Do you want to learn more about our Logistics Department? You can find a report from our visit to the LogiMAT here.

Goodbye for now from Herth+Buss Logistics!
Thomas Sattler