Introduction

Sales orders are received into Access 1000 as transactions initiated by the Order Entry application of the Business system. Transactions may arrive either as issued by the business system or on demand.

Please refer to WMS Application Software and Enterprise System Interfaces for a discussion of the relationships which exist between the Business system and Access 1000 order processing.

Inventory Allocation

When Access 1000 receives an order, it proceeds line-by-line to allocate inventory to the order on a bin location basis. The system selects available inventory first from the forward picking area, if one is established, and then from the location as close as possible to the top of the optimum pick route, LIFO or FIFO, depending on site designation.

If the Business system erroneously communicates a requirement for a quantity of inventory which Access 1000 knows to be not available, the system will process the order for only the available inventory and automatically print an error report on the network printer.

Orders are available for picking as soon as they are processed.

Changes to Orders

As long as the order has not been physically shipped and invoiced, Access 1000 can process changes to orders and order cancellations.

If inventory is added to an order, it is immediately added to the list of outstanding picks.

If inventory is deleted from an order, the inventory is de-allocated and, if already picked, scheduled for move back to a warehouse storage location.

Order Priority

After processing, orders are available for assignment to pickers. The priority of the order, which is used to determine the order of assignment to pickers, is determined by priority fields in the order when created on the Business System.

If the supervisor wishes to change the priority of an order, he/she makes the order priority selection at an Administrative PC, and the order list, along with relevant order information is displayed. The supervisor can select any order and click on the new priority to be assigned. Priority numbers from 1 to 9 are used.

Wave Planning

To increase the efficiency of order picking, the supervisor may elect to combine orders into pick waves.

He/she selects Wave Picking at an Administrative PC and is supplied with a graphical representation of the distribution of inventory to be picked in the warehouse.

The screen makes it easy for the supervisor to determine which orders should be combined to minimize the travel time of the pickers.

Order Status

At an Administrative PC, the warehouse supervisor can access an "All Orders" screen to see the pick/pack/check/ship/invoice status of all orders.

If detail information is needed regarding the filled status of order line items, the information is readily displayed along with other pertinent detail by querying system tables with the order number.

Similarly, if it is necessary to evaluate the status of a particular product, the detail of all order line items from various orders can be seen by querying the system with the product number.

Finishing Orders

When all items on a pick for an order are complete, the system automatically generates an accurate packing slip. If the warehouse supervisor determines that an order is to be shipped when only partially picked, he/she can select a function at an Administrative PC to force the packing slip to print.

The order is packed and checked (if checking is required). Then it is processed for shipping.

If an automated shipping system is used, and if the system is interfaced to the network, Access 1000 automatically captures the shipping information and reports it to the business system.

Relieving Inventory after Shipment

Inventory can be set up to be relieved after picking, packing, checking, shipping or invoicing.

If inventory is not relieved until after invoicing, it is maintained in an allocated state until the notification of invoicing is received from the Business System.