Configure the warehouse layout
- Establish high-priority and low-priority storage areas for optimum placement of goods.
- Divide your warehouse into zones to accommodate various storage needs, such as temperature requirements, or various turnover rates for items.
- Specify warehouse locations on any level (for example, site, warehouse, aisle, rack, shelf, and bin position).
- Group locations by using physical capacity constraint settings.
- Control how items are stored and picked, based on query-defined rules.
To use warehouse management in Supply Chain Management, you must create a warehouse and enable it for more advanced or specialized warehouse management activities.
In the Warehouse specific setup section, select the Use warehouse management processes option.
After enabling the warehouse management processes, you can complete additional setups for general parameters, number sequences, locations, work, and so on.
The warehouse zone is a defined area in a warehouse to which you allocate specific inventory items. It's a collection of different locations.
As part of the process for enabling a warehouse layout, you must define the following:
Zone groups - A logical or physical grouping of zones within a warehouse.
Zones - A logical or physical grouping of locations within a warehouse.
Location profiles - A logical or physical grouping of locations that have the same warehouse location process policies. For example, a mix of different item numbers can be stored there, and the same physical capacity constraints apply. Additionally, location profiles also allow you to mix product dimensions in one location. This functionality can help use locations better by allowing you to decide configurations, colors, styles, and sizes that can be mixed on a certain location profile. Additionally, you can specify specific combinations of those dimensions that can be mixed in the location.
Locations types - A logical or physical grouping of the warehouse locations. For example, you can create a location type for all staging locations. Mandatory settings on the Warehouse management parameters page drive the process of defining staging location types and the final shipping location type.
Locations - The lowest level of location information. Locations are used to track where the on-hand inventory is stored and picked in a warehouse.
The entities that you create to define your warehouse layout are used in the queries that you set up in work templates to drive work orders in the warehouse. Therefore, when you define the zones, location types, and so on, consider how different areas in the warehouse are used for different processes.
Additionally, consider factors such as the physical characteristics of an area. For example, there might be areas where you can use only a certain type of forklift. Another example might be if your company has both production and finished goods within the same facility, and you want to create a single warehouse in Supply Chain Management but then separate the two operations by creating two zone groups. Give your entities descriptive names so that it's easy to identify them when you use them in template queries.
Zones and zone groups
Zones allow you to categorize or group locations into a zone, which can be useful for allocating products based on a zone area. The zone group is a logical grouping of different warehouse zones. Both zones and zone groups are created for reporting.
For example, you could have zones for mixed, frozen, and returns. Warehouse management > Setup > Warehouse
Location formats
You can use the Warehouse management > Setup > Warehouse > Location formats page to create a format for the ID that is used to identify a specific warehouse location. Location formats allow you to define the numbering system for your warehouse. Locations can have unique formatting depending on whether you use aisles, racks, shelves, and bins.
A location format can contain multiple segments, but cannot be more than 10 characters in length in total.
For example, you can create a location format with segments and use a letter as the separator, such as 00A00R000S. "A" = Aisle, "R" = Rack, and "S" = Shelf. When the locations are set up, using the location formats, the warehouse workers can easily go the assigned aisle, rack and shelf for the product they need in the warehouse.
Location profiles
The location profile is where all the setups that you have completed thus far are applied to a profile, which is then assigned to every location in your warehouse. In addition, several other rules apply to a location:
- If license plate tracking is to be used
- If negative inventory is allowed
- If cycle counting is allowed
For example, you can define location dimensions such as height, length, width, and so on for a common unit of measure such as pallets or boxes, or you can set the sizes by location volume. Therefore, if you have an area with different-sized racks or shelves, you will need to create a different location profile.
Additionally, the Allowed product dimension mixing fast tab enables location managing when using product variants or products with dimensions. It allows you to decide whether configurations, colors, style, and sizes can be mixed on a certain location (profile) or if only one or a combination of some of those dimensions can be put to the same location.
Location types
Location types are used to define the locations that your warehouse will be using. Found in Warehouse management > Setup > Warehouse, after adding a description to your locations, you can use the location types to filter the locations to only see those that you want to use for item picking or put away processes.
You can use location types in a large warehouse to specify a dedicated location for inspections or returns. Similarly, you can use location types to label a dock door location, whether it be inbound, outbound, or both.
You can also define location types for specific items such as dry, fresh, or frozen goods.
You can have bulk storage locations to place all items for later transfer. Alternatively, you can have a staging location for bubble wrapping, for example, in the packing process prior to the shipment of goods.
Locations
Inventory locations are used to track the whereabouts of your inventory in the warehouse. You can manually create locations or use a wizard to generate locations.
Location stocking limits
Make sure that you consider the physical layout of the warehouse to determine storage capacities (location stocking limits and location profiles) and to achieve optimal warehouse processes.
You can create location stocking limits to define the maximum amount of a product that can be stored in a location.
For example, bulk locations can hold three pallets, while picking locations can hold ten cases, and dock doors and staging locations have no limits.
Stocking limits require you to enter either a specific location or a location profile, but not both. Multiple items with stocking limits can be at the same location, and one item can also have limits at multiple locations. You can also specify stocking limits for products, product variants, and container types. Supply Chain Management does not allow more than the specified quantity of an item at a specific location.
Location stocking limits help guarantee that a request isn't made to have inventory placed in a location that doesn't have the physical capacity to carry the inventory.
For example, if some locations within a warehouse can hold only one pallet for each location, you can enable location stocking limits. The Quantity value can be set to 1, and the Unit value can be set to PL within a specific location profile grouping.
If more advanced calculations are required to control the location capacity constraints, the location profile settings can be used. In this case, the weight and volume are considered when capacity calculations are done.
To achieve optimal outbound processes, you should evaluate whether to use fixed picking locations and/or packing locations. Often, minimum/maximum replenishment is used for replenishment processes from a bulk area to the fixed picking locations. Additionally, multiple fixed picking locations can be enabled within the same warehouse and for product variants. Consider the flexibility that you can achieve by enabling dedicated demand replenishment overflow locations that are used only for wave/load replenishment processing.
To quickly create the locations within a warehouse, you can use the Location setup wizard. As part of this process, you can maintain the format of the location names.
The location status functionality in Supply Chain Management has fields on the Locations page that will let you have more flexibility when working with, and maintaining locations. The location status can be included in the location directives query to help with better warehouse flow control.
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