CARRIER DOCK APPOINTMENTS REQUIRED!

by Mike Starling

Making your Inbound Supply Chain flow smoothly starts at your Warehouse Receiving Dock. DOCK to STOCK is a key metric in determining warehouse productivity in any warehouse operation. The challenge lies in ensuring internal cooperation and coordination with others inside your own organization long before the carrier arrives at your dock.

Do you require delivering carriers to make dock appointments? If not, you are probably sub-optimizing both time and resource utilization in the Warehouse Receiving process. This can result in such things as inbound receipts blocking aisles and hindering the put-away process, or receiving-shift overtime to handle what should be a normal shift workload. All of that means added operational expense and mediocre productivity at best.

Do you have counterproductive organizational silos? Pre-planning warehouse receipts is more than just labor and time utilization. It’s about internal coordination with the source of inbound product or merchandise. What peer staff group is responsible for generating the majority of your inbound deliveries in the first place? PURCHASING! Who sets the parameters and requirements for the sourcing vendor? PURCHASING. Who should be informing the vendor of your warehouse delivery requirements? PURCHASING. Who gets blamed when delivery receipts are slow or delayed? The WAREHOUSE.

When was the last time your purchasing manager took a walk through the warehouse with the warehouse manager?

Clearly, delivery requirements should not only specify such things as pallet size, Ti-Hi, labeling & marking, etc.; they should also include carrier delivery requirements (such as receiving hours, dock appointment required, and key warehouse contact information, among other things).

So, what type of working relationship exists between your warehouse and your purchasing department? Do both department personnel and management have a clear understanding of day-to-day operational requirements and how they can work together to make life easier for all? It’s up to Department Leadership to Recognize, Address, Implement, and Manage the Inbound Supply Chain. Intra-company management cooperation and support are vital to consistently successful execution.

CARRIER DOCK APPOINTMENTS CAN MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER.

SO, How You DOIN’?

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