SYSTEMS INTEGRATION - How to Get Your House in Order
Westcott says Nexcom, with the U.S. Navy as its sole client, has its employees pull cases off the conveyor belts, scan the labels, visually check that the product in the cases corresponds with what’s on the label and verify that the quantity of items in the case matches the packing slip. That labor-intensive process is the price one pays for running more than one WMS, but it’s cheaper than ticking off the U.S. Navy by messing up the orders.
Nexcom, which operates two WMSs and uses its merchandising system to run seven distribution centers and four smaller warehousing facilities all over the globe, also employs inventory control groups that go around the warehouse counting products in various locations. "In most cases, that’s done in reaction to a person going to pick a product and finding that it’s not there," Westcott says.
Cott CIO Neary also advocates manual counts and holding employees accountable for them. No matter what an employee’s position is in the warehouse, everyone has to do manual counts, and their performance is measured based on whether their manual counts match up with the counts in the WMS.
"You’d be amazed at how well this works," says Neary. "When you hold people accountable to a standard, they do it."
