Thursday, December 18, 2008

EDI, Directed Picking, and Dallas

It's been quite a while since I've had a chance to get back to this blog. Sorry about that. These past few months have been quite hectic - lotta new things going on at work, plus some medical and family issues to handle.

Last night I returned from a trip to a client in Dallas where we were implementing a Warehouse Management System. It's a pretty neat system that'll automatically pull down the orders through EDI. The orders will then sit in a queue until they're accepted (or rejected - but we really don't like to reject orders!). When an order is accepted, it can then be pulled from inventory. We're using a directed picking approach to that step. After it's pulled, it's sent down the line to packing where it's boxed up for shipment. When it's shipped, an invoice is also being created. We're also sending an ASN and Invoice through EDI, and then sending the Invoice info to Great Plains for the accounting backend.

When the inventory level for a product falls too low, we're automatically creating a PO. Like the incoming orders, the PO goes into a queue waiting for approval. When that PO is approved, it'll be sent out, again through EDI.

I flew into Dallas Sunday evening. It had been in the 80s during the day. When I left here, it was around 30. As we were making our final descent, we suddenly pulled back up. The pilot came on and announced that we were going to circle DFW to let the cold front pass through. It was probably around 50 when we landed. The next morning it was around 30 degrees and I had to scrape ice off the windshield! When I left the client's office Monday evening, I had to re-scrape the windshield to remove that afternoon's ice. Tuesday morning was a repeat of Monday morning. Yesterday it finally got up to around 45 there. Dallas' weather forcast for today was back up in the 60s or even 70s. Last night when I returned home, we had around 3 inches of snow. So I must have brought the cold snap with me, and taken it back with me.

Hal Hamer