1. it can only consolidate with Open shipments
2. there is no setup for a date range for the shipping date
Typical scenario:
Shipments should be consolidated per address, and customers place multiple orders per day.
10:00 Sales order 1 for customer X is entered
10:30 Release to warehouse
11:00 Picking starts
11:30 Picked goods at PACK location
14:00 Sales order 2 for customer X is entered
15:00 Release to warehouse: now the new sales order 2 should be added to the existing shipment with order 1
15:30 Picking order 2 starts
16:00 Picked goods at PACK location
16:05 Sales order 1 and 2 can be packed on 1 container through the packing station
Ad 1: as long as the existing shipment is not confirmed or packing slip posted it should be possible to add new shipment lines to it. (See my other idea "Store shipment ID on packing slip and invoice")
My preferred solution direction for an automatic process would be:
An extra optional wave template step Consolidate shipments.
When this step is added after the createWork, the newly created work should be moved to an existing shipment according to the shipment consoldation policy.
The restriction is that the shipment ID must be filled on the work header (work break per shipment).
Comments
Limitation of ship date workarounds
Workaround 1
Backorder lines might not be added to the same shipment in case the shipment was for instance being created yesterday and a new order line is being created today.
Workaround 2
See workaround 1
Workaround 3
· Maintenance
· Performance – system will validate all dates even if they are not valid anymore.
Category: Warehouse Management
Workaround 1
Schedule different “automatic release to warehouse batch jobs” that run in sequence after each other. One job for shipments with shipment today (day(0)), one for shipments with ship date tomorrow (day(1)), etc.. This will ensure that shipments with different ship dates will not be consolidated.
Workaround 2
Configure multiple shipment consolidation policies. This means that we will configure one shipment consolidation policy for shipments with shipment today (day(0)), one for shipments with ship date tomorrow (day(1)), etc.. This will ensure that shipments with different ship dates will not be consolidated.
Workaround 3
Configure multiple shipment consolidation policies. This means that we will configure one shipment consolidation policy for shipments with shipment date M1/XX/YYYY, M8/XX/YYYY etc. one for shipments with ship date T2/XX/YYYY, T9/XX/YYYY etc. This will ensure that shipments with different ship dates will not be consolidated. Besides this, this approach will ensure that any backorder lines will still be added to shipments with the same shipment date assuming that for these shipments no work has been created yet.
Category: Warehouse Management
I do agree with the points shared by Frans and Jürgen. Even if this idea is already outstanding for quite a long time it's still very hard to sell to customers that the base shipment consolidation policy does not take the ship date into account. Although workarounds exist each of these workarounds do still have serious limitations in my opinion.
Category: Warehouse Management
Thank you for posting this very much required idea, Frans!
Maybe, just in order for everyone´s better understanding, one typical scenario that we experienced with pain point no. 2. "there is no setup for a date range for the shipping date":
- We have orders for the same customer and delivery address etc. with different delivery dates for the next 5 days for example!
- Shipments should be split by requested/confirmed delivery date of the sales orders lines.
- This means that we want to do only one automatic release to warehouse batch job per day covering the order lines due for the next 5 days.
- Currently it´s only possible to get all order lines consolidated to one shipment!
- The workaround with multiple release batch jobs, filtered by (day(X)) is suboptimal!
Category: Warehouse Management