Warehouse Management Using ERPNext

ERPNext Stock/Inventory
1

I’ve been thinking about how to physically manage the warehousing operations with ERPNext workflow?
At present I see option of manually feeding everything into the system after packaging is done. However there is a high probability of mistakes while writing and reading of product codes and their quantities.
In the odoo-world the process seems to be completely barcode driven (Video at end.) which seems to be quite efficient.
I have tried to breakdown the most common (semi-automated) workflow for warehouse management here. Would love to hear from everyone about what they think about it and how they manage the same at present.

1. Receiving -

  • Check against purchase order. (simply done by human against pending purchase orders from vendor)
  • Scan product barcode (in receiving note?)
  • Optional Quality Check
  • Purchase Receipt (submit)

2. Sort and Store -

  • Scan bin/isle location?
  • Scan all items not placed yet
  • Scan/click “items stored”

2. Pick and Pack -

  • Select Sales order
  • Scan product barcode (while picking from isles)
  • Pack in master-boxes ( print master barcode to be stuck on master box, to be used for dispatch)

3. Dispatch -

  • Small print out with pending products given to packer.
  • Get products to one place and select customer (in POS?)
  • Scan masterbox/product codes (masterbox barcodes expand automatically into products for sales invoice)
  • Create Delivery Note
  • Make Invoice
2

Also this is how Amazon ( which I believe should have some of the most optimised warehousing processes in the world) does it.

3

In ERPNext, you can fetch items by scanning Barcode.

https://erpnext.org/docs/user/manual/en/stock/articles/track-items-using-barcode

For the master box print, perhaps you can create a doctype, or use Sales Order itself. You can add a new Barcode field and add it on the Print Format to be applied on the master box. You can use Print Format builder for creating custom print format.

4

Hi, I’ve worked with WMS before, My company previously used NetSuite WMS, and we decided to use only a handful of the features on the WMS, and develop our own UI layer and logic to act as the primary fulfillment WMS.

One of the main component on the NetSuite WMS is bin locations, which are the smallest unit of containment that will have an ID, perhaps this is the same as leaves in ERPNext’s location tree.

On the process, in my opinion, there are two ways we can do the operations, bulk and singular items. Bulk operation should have the feature to input the quantity manually, as opposed to singular operation where users should manually scan the item one by one to increase the quantity count. Depending on the business and the scale of business, both options could be useful in each step of the operation.

For example, in my company, it makes more sense to receive in bulk, but in picking and packing, since we’re dealing with retail customers, we actually pick in singular pieces.

One important thing that we should add is the ability to stock count, using what we called cycle counts. There are many ways to do this, but my favorite way to do it is to lock access to a particular bin / location (which means no action can be done on that location) and receive input from users on actual quantity for all items they count in that bin. Afterwards an inventory adjustment would be approved by the finance team to make the changes.

Another important thing that is missing from the features you listed is putaway and picking strategies, which will help you minimize picker movement, and also make sure that you store items in the right zones, for example for perishable goods, you might want to store it in a cold storage instead of regular shelves. This feature can also help make sure that the picker use FEFO or FIFO picking.

What we modified from the NetSuite WMS is the ability to have license plate picking. Since our picker move around and pick items from shelves (instead of using conveyor belt), they need to put the items in a temporary and mobile bin before the item gets packed. Our NetSuite WMS cannot handle this operation, so the picked items are stored on a temporary record that doesn’t affect the actual bin item record, this results in errors when we do stock counting.

I can help list detailed process on each step of operations for my company if you want… Also the alternative way to do it.

2 Likes
5

Any update @LifeP ???

6

Hi adityo25, would you happen to still have that list we are beginning to setup ERPNext and were going thru some of these exact things that you mention. if not anywhere i can find the sites you referenced when building this out. any help is appreciated thank you

7

@adityo25 @LifeP did you guys get any chance to materialize WMS?

Will there a lot of difference in the design for the use-cases of B2B and B2C?

Can someone please shed some light on this?