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Nov 03 2011

Welcome to "Part 2" of my Blog posting for the ELECTRONIC LOADING SHEET!

Welcome to another Blog posting.

There are two things about the new ELS (ELECTRONIC LOADING SHEET) that I wanted to clarify in this Blog posting:

Customer "Add-Ons"

I know that you all "love" it when customer's call in to make changes to their order.

Unfortunately it's a necessary part of your business, and it's that service aspect that you provide that sets you apart from the larger distributors that arent able to accomodate these requests from customers.

What happens when you've already picked an order, and then the customer requests additional items to be added?  

Do items sometimes get picked over again, and then have to be returned to their slots?

Most NECS customers will print another Loading Sheet, with the customer "Add-On's" broken out.

The bottom line is that managing customer "Add-On's" can sometimes be a time consuming, mistake prone process.

The good news is that the ELS provides a tool to help you manage this better when it comes to picking the order in the warehouse.

Just hit the "Add-On" button, and the ELS will break down all the "Add-On's" on the order by "Revision" letter.

Here is an example of that screen:




The above screen shot clearly shows the "Add-On's", specifically for Revision "C" and "D" of this particular order.


Multiple Scanners

Here is an interesting concept for you to wrap your head around when it comes to scanning an order with ELS.

Did you know that your Android tablet will allow you to connect up to 30 Bluetooth devices?

Each barcode scanner is considered a seperate Bluetooth device, so you could potenially have 30 scanners connected to one tablet.

Now in reality, having 30 scanners on one tablet would be a bit too much.  But having 2 or 3 connected, would not be an issue.

What this means is that you can bring up an order on the ELS for picking, and have multiple people in your warehouse, scanning the items on that customers order.  All the while, the ELS system is tracking who is scanning what item (with a date/time stamp).

If the item's barcode contains a "serial number" (which many do), the warehouse staff will not be allowed to scan the same barcode label more than once.

And of course, when the required item quantity is scanned, the scanners will not be able to keep on scanning that item.

The bottom line is that this ability can:
1. Save you money because multiple warehouse pickers scanning items, can operate off one tablet.
2. Make the picking process more effecient by supporting multiple pickers to simultaneously pick items.
3. You can also connect a Bluetooth scale, so that someone could be weighing items, while the pickers are scanning.

I have more ideas about ELS, which I will run by you in future Blogs.

Using a Star Trek phrase which says "Space... the Final Frontier...", in ELS terms, this becomes "Your Warehouse... the Final Frontier".  I mention this because automating a food distributors warehouse at an affordable cost, is something that most NECS entree customers have not been able to accomplish... yet...


Thoughts?  Questions?  Want to try it?  Please send me an email at chris@necs.com.