Cross Docking with WMS en Dynamics 365

Nowadays, with the evolution of logistics systems and the agility of the supply chain, it requires day by day that the gap between the client and the supplier be closer and closer. This is where cross-docking strategies come in, so today, in Consejos Dynamics, we will explore these strategies and how to work with them in Dynamics.

Let's start at the beginning. What is cross-docking? Within the supply chain, there are three well-differentiated actors. The customer, the warehouse, and the vendor generate a relationship as follows:

The vendor sends the merchandise to the warehouse, and is dispatched to the final customer on demand. When working with low response times, in some cases, storage times must be reduced, and the product must be shipped to the customer as quickly as possible.

Then the Cross-Docking strategy is born, basically dispatching the merchandise that arrives from a supplier directly to the client without storing it. With this, we reduce storage times considerably.

We can differentiate two origins of cross-docking depending on the origin of the merchandise.

From the vendor, where the merchandise arrives at the receiving dock, it is controlled and dispatched through the outbound dock.

Production is where the merchandise is manufactured, and after it leaves the production line, it is controlled and packed, and finally, it is moved directly to the outbound dock to be shipped.

Cross docking phases:

The main phases of the cross-docking process can be the following, but they depend on the process of each warehouse:

1. Supplier distribution programming/production programming, depending on the origin of the merchandise.

2. Reception of merchandise in the warehouse / Completion of production

3. Review or inspection of the merchandise.

4. If necessary, re-packaging and consolidation orders.

5. Dispatch of the merchandise.

These phases give us an understanding of two types of cross-docking that can occur in the warehouse.

Pre-distributed cross-docking

This is the case where the provider sends loads or orders according to the demand received from customers. Since the shipments to be dispatched are consistent with the orders received, this cross-docking strategy is limited to moving the merchandise from the entry dock to the exit dock without much intervention from the warehouse.

Consolidated cross-docking.

In this case, the orders received do not match customer demand. Occasionally, placing orders with suppliers by quantity is cheaper than transferring a request. It also depends on the planning carried out by the warehouse. In any case, what happens is the following:

The orders arriving at the inbound dock must be reorganized in the warehouse and distributed in different shipments.

We will see how to configure these types of cross-docking in Dynamics.

Setting:

To understand the phases of the cross-docking process, we must configure the following components:

• A Work Class of the type cross-docking that will group the cross-docking work. We can create it in the Warehouse management > Setup > Work > Work classes menu :

We give it an ID and description.

• A mobile device Menu item to process the created cross-dock job. As the cross-docking work is done after the order is received, we only have to make a menu item to process the placement work. We can enter Warehouse management > Configure > Mobile device > Mobile device menu items:

In this case, we have two options: we create a new menu item to process the cross-docking placement work or work it within the purchase order placement menu. In the example, I will take advantage of the purchase order placement menu, but if you need to create a new one, you must make one with mode= Work and, Use existing work = Yes. In the field directed by, you can select the option that suits you best; in my case, it is by a group of users since I allow users to pick several jobs simultaneously, and the mobile application guides them to place all the selected items.

• A cross-dock template to define how the cross-docking will be processed. We can find it in Warehouse Management> Setup > Work > Cross-dock template.

In this form, we'll create our template to control how cross-docking will work:

• Demand release policy: defines when cross-docking is planned before supply receipt or at reception. The first will create work when the sales order is released, and the wave is processed. The supply receipt option is used for production cross-docking.

• Demand requirements define where demand is taken from. It can be an order reservation or marking.

• The location type defines where the placed work will go. If we select a location directive, we must specify a location directive for cross-dock to determine the location, or we could inherit the shipping location.

• Maximum and minimum window, here, we can specify a time window for shipments to be processed by this template.

• The Supply Sources tab indicates which are the sources for cross-docking. We can add purchase orders, transfer orders, and production orders.

• We also need a job template to do the cross-docking job. We can create this from Warehouse management > Configure > Work > Work template.

Here we define the steps that the cross-docking will have. In this case, we exemplify pre-distributed cross-docking to organize a template with only two steps. However, more pick-and-put activities can also be used to redistribute orders. It is also important to understand that if we have consolidated cross-docking, we must work with some sorter placement and use output sorting like the put-to-wall functionality we explored earlier in this post.

• A Location Directive to direct the cross-docking work. This will be in case we do not use the inherited location type option of the shipment that we define in the cross-docking template. We go to the Warehouse management > Configure > Location directives path to define it.

Here we create a simple placement directive for the example that allows us to place everything on one output dock.

Process:

• We create a purchase order for ten units of item A0001 as a test.

• We create a sales order for the same quantity and set a mark against the purchase order.

• We release the warehouse and will see that it does not create the cross-docking job because the items have not arrived.

• We can enter the shipment and verify the cross-docking information from the planned cross-docking button.

• We receive the purchase order through the mobile application.

• Once received, the cross-dock job will be created.

• We do the cross-docking from the mobile application.

• Job completed. Inventory is at the Outbound dock.

This way, we configure and process a direct cross-docking from the input to the output dock. If you are interested in the subject, we can make a second post with examples of cross-docking from production or cross-docking aligned with an output order.

I hope you can try it, and see you in the next #ConsejoDynamics!!!