You might not realize it but when your goods arrive at your 3PL warehouse with receiving issues this creates unnecessary and costly delays.This could happen with any warehouse but more importantly it is far too common. It happens when your product arrives into receiving and has some sort of issue and so begins the journey. For instance; no purchase order in the WMS, mis-markings, damages, or wrong quantities are all factors that make it impossible to receive quickly. The product will soon be moved into a special receiving area where it can be further inspected after clarity is communicated from the client. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for this process to take more than a week or even up to a month to get your product out of that special place.
These kinds of delays simply will not be tolerated in a best practice warehouse especially when the fault is not on the warehouse. This poor shipping practice is both inefficient and costly for all concerned. If you look at warehousing best practices as defined by the WERC Best Practices Guide “the basic function of the receiving and inspection process is to take responsibility for the inbound material, validate the material received to the purchase order (PO), check for any damages to the material received.” Getting it right from the start will reduce the headaches downstream in the overall processes.
Inefficiencies created by outside influence on the receiving dock means extra costs, such as dock fines and fees or even worse, compounding daily costs from an organized receiving dock. The guide continues, “It is not uncommon that materials are lost or misplaced in the rush, that receiving transactions are not completed or errors are made, and in the confusion, materials are moved when they should not.”This statement places the sole responsibility on the warehouse receiving teams’ shoulders.A huge responsibility for those hard-working men and women can only make their already difficult jobs more difficult.
Most of the BEST 3PL’s will have a compliance guide for receiving and will make that available for all customers to alleviate any issues. This guide is by no means the end all be all, but rather is intended to be a structured blueprint to help turn products from receiving, to the floor and back out the door to your eCommerce fulfillment customers quickly, accurately and efficiently.