Datalinx Blog

Driven by the change in shopping habits during lockdown, and a need to keep businesses commercially viable, many companies have had to rapidly change their business processes to switch to eCommerce trading, and dispatch direct from their warehouse.

Typically, we have seen the focus move from wholesale, bulk, B2B orders to B2C as people have not been able to shop in-store, so have shifted their spending capability to online shopping, which has led to challenges within our customer base, as they have reacted this shift to meet a different way of fulfilling demand for their product.

According to the UK Office of National Statistics bulletin, Online retail sales in July were 50.4% higher than February’s pre-pandemic levels* and typically within the sector as a proportion of all retailing, online sales now make up 28.9% of all sales.

The language used in the warehouse can a bit confusing! Especially with all the abbreviations, so below are some of the Datalinx team favourites!

3PL: Third party logistics

ADC: Automated data collection

APS: Advanced planning and scheduling

ASN: Advanced shipment notifications are used to notify a customer of a shipment. Often including purchase order numbers, SKU numbers, lot numbers, quantity, pallet or container number, carton number

A warehouse management system (WMS) requires the warehouse bin locations to be barcoded for efficient usage.  Barcoding eliminates the manual entry of data and the inherent risk of typing mistakes; scanning barcoded data is much faster than typing.

The naming of the bin locations should be designed to give a ‘grid map’ of the warehouses / yards / storage areas so it is clear where each bin location is situated within each branch.

Any ‘guidance’ that will be given during picking operations in the WMS will normally use an alphanumeric bin sequence. Therefore, when designing the bin code format, thought also needs to be given to the most efficient ‘walk’ around the warehouse when typically picking stock.

Two common examples of a naming convention are described below.