- Other examples of warehouse structuring
Warehouse construction and planning
A warehouse basically always consists of 2 levels:
1. Warehouse (Designation: room, shelf, branch, ...)
2. Warehouse shelving (Designation: shelf, compartment, room, ...)
The first level can be a building, as well as a room or even a shelf. The second level can then be a room, a shelf, a compartment or even a compartment subdivision. A combination of room, shelf, compartment and open front storage box is ideal.
Warehouse spaces must be designated with a consecutive number without spaces and special characters. A branch could also be identified by a capital letter in front (BL2AB01 = Berlin, Lager2, Regal A, FachB, Unterteilung 01).
- Designation of storage room e.g. main warehouse
- Designation of shelving, compartments and open front storage boxes/subdivisions:
- HL: Specifies the room (if there are several rooms, it is immediately clear in which room the item is stored)
- 0101: E.g. 4-digit sequence, the 1st number stands for the shelf, the other two are then user-defined for the compartments)
- A: The letter determines the compartment division or e.g. a separate open front storage box (spare parts) or e.g. an ESD box with several compartment divisions (e.g. 2 letters can also be used here)
In the first step, a new warehouse must be created under Fulfillment > Warehouse management via +NEW. As an option, this warehouse can be assigned to a project or an address can be specified.
- Warehouse: Assign a name for the warehouse (e.g. warehouse Berlin, main warehouse, production warehouse, hall, etc.)
- Project: A project can be assigned if a warehouse is only to be used for one business unit or one customer, for example
- Address: Indication of an address for a commission warehouse, external production or address or country of the warehouse
Then the newly created warehouse must be saved so that it appears in the overview.
In the second step, the pen icon can be used to add the shelving and view the stock and movements.
This tab displays an overview of all shelves. In addition, new shelves can be created and imported here.
Create a new shelf
Here you can create new shelving:
- Description: Assign a name to the shelf (e.g. BL2AB01, L30AA01, L1001, ...)
- Contacts: Optional indication of an address for a commission warehouse or external production
- Supply warehouse: Selection that this warehouse will not be suggested for orders during stock removal. However, for the order proposal, the merchandise in a replenishment warehouse counts as well
- Consumption warehouse: Selection that only incoming movements into the warehouse are recorded, but no stock is managed
- No auto shipping warehouse (Storage area for blocked stock): Selection that the stock for the warehouse is not used for auto shipping. The order stock traffic light remains red if there is only merchandise left in this warehouse location. The merchandise will also not be considered for the order proposal - as if there is nothing in stock at all. The stock can be used for "Defective goods" or "General blocking reasons".
Note: Check No auto shipping warehouse (Storage area for blocked stock) so that the checkbox with POS warehouse appears
- Productions are allowed to access this warehouse: Selection that only this warehouse will be displayed as preferred warehouse in the production. If this checkbox is not set, all warehouses will be displayed
- Dimensions: Specification of the length, width and height of the shelving
- Shelf type: Selection whether it is a shelf or a pallet. In addition, sorting can be specified here
- Category: Selection of category A, B or C
This warehouse is not suggested for productions and orders during stock removal. For this purpose, the Supply warehouse checkbox must be checked when creating a new shelf.
The shelf is now displayed in the overview of all locations.
Stocks are not kept in this warehouse, but all posted items are listed as posting history. The warehouse can be used for "Scrapping" or "Consumption". For this purpose, the Consumption warehouse checkbox must be checked when creating a new shelf.
The shelf is now displayed in the overview of all locations.
In the Shelf Import tab, you can perform a quick import of the storage locations via the free field or a CSV import of the storage locations.
Stock labels can only be a maximum of 15 characters long in the regular assignment. Exceeding the 15 characters can cause you problems when creating warehouse/shelf labels. You can override this limitation using the Shelf import function.
Project warehouse and preferred warehouse
A project warehouse is an assignment of a warehouse to a logistics process. The project warehouse is mainly used for the following structuring:
The auto-shipment of a project should access exactly 3 project warehouses, not other warehouses
The auto-shipment of a project (or several projects) removed exactly from one warehouse
A project draws from exactly one or exactly x warehouse. The following settings are necessary:
Assign a project to the warehouse (main warehouse) (can also be several warehouses)
1. Project warehouses
Under Project > Settings > Logistics / shipping in the Options area, set a checkmark at Project warehouse, leave the preferred warehouse blank (as it can be several warehouses).
The auto-shipment will draw from this/these warehouse(s). If there is any merchandise in other warehouses (that do not belong to the project), it will not be used. In this case, the order traffic light will switch to "orange".
2. Preferred warehouse
A project or x projects draw from exactly one warehouse. The following settings are required for this use:
- Set a warehouse in the project (do not check the box)
- Do NOT assign a project to the warehouse
Auto-shipping draws from this warehouse. The others are not used. The project warehouse is entered in the order when a new order is created.
If a project is to be drawn automatically in the order, a commission/consignment warehouse can be set (see Commission warehouse). The setting can be found under Master data > Contacts > Edit address > Payment terms / taxation.
If a very large number of shelves is to be created, then shelf import can be used. The shelf names can be entered into the field one below the other or comma-separated and loaded into the system at once.
In this tab, an overview of the current stock of items in the warehouses is displayed. It is possible to filter both by Storage place and by Product.
This tab displays the consumption history. You can filter by Storage location as well as by Product.
Warehouses and their associated shelves can be labeled with a barcode label. The label Warehouse small is used here, which can be stored/defined in the system settings: Administration > Settings > System > Labels > +NEW.
There are two options for printing labels for the warehouse. On the one hand, all labels for a warehouse can be printed, i.e. one label for each shelf that is assigned to this warehouse. To do this, click on the label in the row of the corresponding warehouse in the Overview area under Warehouse management. On the other hand, it is also possible to print individual labels for specific shelves. To do this, click on the pen icon in the Overview area under Warehouse management, then on the corresponding shelf and on the label icon.
The label printer can be used to print warehouse labels:
- Name of the WarehouseBarcode (Contains the internal warehouse location ID). The barcode label should contain the warehouse location name
- Warehouses can be operated with barcode scanner or manually
Note: It is not possible to scan for the warehouse location ID when using the "Store item" option. Instead, the storage bins are to be scanned according to the warehouse name. In the "Quick store" option, on the other hand, it is possible to search or scan for both the warehouse location ID and the warehouse name.
Warehouse - Allocation of rights
The employee projects for the warehouse management are also actively evaluated. This means that employees only see the warehouses for which they also have the employee role. If an employee should be able to see all warehouses, the role Employee can be reassigned under Master data > Contacts > Roles and the field Project can be left empty. The employee then receives the project assignment ALL and is therefore permitted to see all warehouses.
Important: If warehouses are assigned to specific projects based on user rights allocation, this can also affect processes (e.g. stock, removal from stock, transfer, order reservation). The assignment of warehouses to projects should be based on the logistics processes, not on the allocation of rights.
All reservations for orders can be viewed via Fulfillment > Reservations. Reservations for orders can be deleted here. The autoship process (Calculate autoship) immediately reassigns the reservations in ascending order (orders ordered first are reserved first), provided that reservations are activated in a project (see Project settings, Logistics settings).
Reservations can also be prioritized directly in the order.
Reservations are displayed in each item in the Stock tab. Reservations can be deleted here as well.
The stock value can be viewed directly for information purposes. This function allows to estimate the stock value without inventory. For a given day, the value is stored here at the time when the process starter "lagerwert" (stock value) was running.
The stock calculation determines the current status/stock value and does not replace the inventory in the conventional sense.
The total stock value at a glance can be viewed directly in the gray info box. This is calculated according to the last entered purchase price, the inventory value and the calculated purchase price.
Value per warehouse/location/shelf
The value based on the last price entered can also be read directly per shelf. The search option can be used to limit the search to one warehouse/shelf. You can also filter by date, product and product category and group products from the same warehouse.
Automatic stock calculation
It is possible to regularly determine the stock level for all stock items per day via the process starter lagerwert (background process) and to view it under the tab Inventory calculation.
Using the drop-down menu, the data of the following prices can be loaded into the live table:
- Last purchase price (live): the stocks of the selected date with the current purchase prices are displayed
- Calculated purchase price (live): the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the current calculated purchase prices
- Inventory value (live): the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the current inventory values
- Last purchase price (only from archive): the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the purchase prices at that time
- Calculated purchase price (only from archive): the stocks of the selected date are displayed with the then calculated purchase prices
- Inventory value (only from archive): the stocks of the selected date with the inventory values at that time are displayed
Note: The process starter must be running for this. It is activated by default.
Then, using the filters provided, you can select the date, a product or a product category, as well as display the stock levels for a warehouse cumulatively.
The Stock tab allows you to display the stock of all stock items with the storage location in which they are currently stored. It is also possible to use the sliders All stock items without stock or Group by batches to display all stock items without current stock or stock by batches. These stocks can then be output as a .CSV, Excel or PDF file.
Other examples of warehouse structuring
Example of simple warehouse structure: Room + Shelf1. Warehouse room: Storage1 2. Warehouse shelves: L1001, L1002, L1003, ...
- L1001: L1 = Warehouse1
- L1001: 001 = Shelf 001 or compartment 001
Example of average warehouse structure: Room + Shelf + Compartment (+ Compartment subdivision)1. Warehouse space: Warehouse2 2. warehouse shelves: L211A01, L211A02, L211A03, ..., L216Z01, L216Z02, ...
- L211A25: L2 = Warehouse2
- L211A25: 11 = Shelf 11 or compartment 11
- L211A25: A25 = Compartment A25 or compartment A, open front storage box 25
Example of more complex warehouse structure: room + room subdivision + shelf + compartment (+ compartment subdivision)1. Storage room: Warehouse3 2. storage shelves: L30AA01 - L300AA0n, ... L30AB01 - L30AB0n ..., L30ZZ01 - L30ZZmn
- L31AA01: L31 = Warehouse3, 1st row or L31 = Warehouse3, right and L32 = Warehouse 3, left
- L31AA01: AA = Shelf A, Compartment A
- L31AA01: 01= Compartment subdivision 01
Example of distributed warehouse layout: Branch + Room + Shelf + Compartment (+ Compartment subdivision)1. Storage room: Berlin warehouse 2. storage shelves: BL2AB01, ..., BL2ZZ99
- BL2AB01 = Berlin
- BL2AB01 = Warehouse2
- BL2AB01 = Shelf A
- BL2AB01 = Compartment B01 or Compartment B and Compartment Subdivision 01