Outbound Management

A Performance Management Tool for the Warehouse

A critical challenge facing many of today’s warehouses is effective performance management of the outbound problem: selecting and loading product efficiently and accurately. Syntelic’s Outbound Management (or “OM”) software system is focused on just this problem – and it can help your operations improve productivity and strengthen customer service.

Load Diagramming: More that Just a Pretty Picture

Loading a trailer can be a complex task, requiring you to balance a wide range of constraints. A load plan determines where each item or case will be stored within a trailer. A key component of this plan is the load diagram itself, which presents an easy-to-use visual blueprint for the warehouse operations staff.

Syntelic’s OM can build your daily load plans with diagrams in a matter of a few seconds for each truck or trailer. And each plan will be built consistently according to the rules that you set.

No Surprises on the Loading Dock

Along with the assignments for each case, the load planning process determines where every pallet, or other type of container, will be positioned within each trailer. Why is this so important? By pre-planning your loads with OM, and by directing your warehouse to follow that plan, your warehouse staff can focus on the job of accurately following that plan and not stopping to reevaluate and adjust where individual items should go.
You won’t find yourself standing on the loading dock with 22 pallets of product waiting to fit on an 18-pallet trailer. Avoiding these frustrating situations can save you money through time savings and reduced product damage that may come about as a result of double handling.

Effective Use of Capacity

OM knows the capacities of each type of truck or trailer in your inventory, and knows just how much can fit on each pallet for each configuration and each product type. With this knowledge, the load planning algorithm can select the right trailer for each load and balance the products across the available capacity.

Dealing with Loading Constraints

If you’re like most operations, you have a long list of tedious loading constraints that must be followed. For example, there may be certain product types that should not be mixed, such as frozen and dry products. Some of your customers may require their pallets to be built without mixing the products of other customers on the same pallet. Your trailers are loaded from the rear, but they may sometimes be unloaded through side doors, leading to a distinct difference between the loading and unloading sequences. OM understands and works within these real-world constraints.

Warehouse vs. Transportation - Removing Barriers

An unfortunate fact of life is the friction that can build between warehouse and transportation operations. An effective tool for bringing down that barrier is communication. OM provides just such a tool. With your warehouse consistently following the load plans laid out by OM, the transportation staff will learn to rely on, and have confidence in, the structure of the load. Drivers will know just where to look in the trailer to find each delivery’s products.

Selector Operations: Setting the Standard

After load diagrams have been established, Syntelic’s OM is ready to tackle the job of actually loading the trailers. Syntelic provides all the tools necessary to efficiently and accurately make selector assignments and supervise work progress.

Building an Effective Work Plan

OM arranges and combines the pallets and other containers that were planned by the load diagramming phase into individual work tasks that can be assigned to warehousemen. Each work task is tagged with a standard labor time based on several factors such as the number of cases to be selected, number of aisles traversed, and so on.

Flexible Label Printing

With OM, you can design and print your own selection labels. Labels provide a simple yet powerful quality control procedure. They allow tangible and visible evidence that the selection task is being carried out correctly. These quality control benefits continue outside the warehouse, allowing proper identification of product by the driver, as well as by your customers.
You can design your labels with the fonts and styles that will emphasize the critical fields, such as warehouse location or stop number, that are necessary for quick and accurate recognition by your operations staff. Specialized labels can also be prepared; for example, header labels can be used to summarize each task’s labor objectives, and feedback labels can be used for collecting actual catch-weight quantities.

Visibility - Executing the Plan

OM has tremendous visibility into the daily selection process. It knows the route dispatch sequence, it knows the loading sequences, and it knows the standard labor time required for each task. With this knowledge, the system is able to lay out a selection plan to be processed in a practical sequence, one that is efficient and can even facilitate the minimization of staging by moving finished pallets directly into their respective trailers.
As the selection process gets underway, OM also records and monitors progress. Feedback can be prepared for individual employees as the shift moves forward. At any point during the shift, hour-by-hour or even minute-by-minute, OM can measure progress and reveal deficiencies before they become real problems.

Warehouse Performance: Controlling Costs

Outbound Management processes a large amount of information each and every day. This data is a tremendous resource, and Syntelic has included the tools to take advantage of its potential. OM allows you to quantify operational efficiency, employee performance, and customer service. This rigorous process of performance evaluation eliminates reliance on softer qualitative measures. Visibility into historical information provides the knowledge necessary to build successful business plans and to forecast future equipment and manpower needs.

Management By Exception

OM was designed with analytical reporting in mind. Its database is uniquely structured to store and process large quantities of information. OM promotes “management by exception” by enabling you to focus on the issues. OM allows you to spot issues at a high level, and then drill-down to the most extreme examples within that summary, effectively tracking down the root cause of a problem.

Thus, you can measure management’s ability to build and execute an efficient plan by viewing performance at an overall work zone or warehouse level. Or, you may focus on employee-level performance by examining how each member of your warehouse staff carries out their responsibilities. With regular review, excellent employees can be recognized for their achievements, while the work habits of poor performers can be quantified and addressed in a constructive manner.

A Cycle of Continuous Improvement

An essential part of quality assurance is establishing a cycle of continuous improvement. This process includes (1) identification of a problem, (2) implementation of corrective action and (3) confirmation of desired results. OM can be a key component in this cycle by helping you discover the issues and then, later, following up to ensure that those issues were successfully resolved. Ongoing monitoring and analysis allows management to better understand its operations and, thus, make better decisions.

Error Tracking – Over, Short & Damage

As an optional input, OM has the ability to collect invoice adjustments from your order processing system. This input may include delivery errors such as shortages, “found later on truck”, miss-picks, and other problems. With this information, OM can uncover trends by customer, employee, item, or other category. For some companies, these errors are a significant source of expense, and better management of these problems can represent tangible improvements on the bottom line.

Flexibility: Seeing It Your Way

An OM implementation includes a series of standard model reports. However, if a particular need is not met by these model reports, you can modify one of the model reports, or create your own report. OM includes report-writer capabilities that were designed especially for the distribution industry – making it easy to obtain the information you want. After you create your own reports, they can be named and saved for easy use on a periodic basis in the same manner as one of the model reports.

Delivering Solutions

Outbound Management is a powerful software application that, working with Syntelic’s experts, can be implemented much faster than you might think. Talk to your Syntelic representative to find out how you can start seeing benefits as soon as possible.