Let There Be Light!

Your vendor said they loaded 50 cartons of widgets on their recent shipment to you. Yet, until you actually see that product on your receiving dock, and you ‘receive’ them into your ERP/WMS, the product does not actually exist. In fact, you are not sure widgets are in the boxes or that there are even 50 of those.

Since the beginning of time companies have been shipping loads of product in trucks, ships, and planes. Go back far enough and more than one donkey was involved. For centuries this journey has been a black hole between shipment and receipt.

It can take those 50 cartons weeks or months to pass through your black hole/supply chain. And in that period of time the reason you bought them changes. Customers want more or less than you planned, or in different regions or through different channels.

An exasperated, senior supply chain executive recently learned that 3 of the 8 containers loaded on a ship heading toward North America fell into the Pacific. Not uncommon, but not great. Worse, he didn’t know which specific SKUs and quantities were in the 3 at the bottom of the ocean.

So, after centuries of shipping, and in these advanced technology days, we’ve reached the point where we don’t even know what is inside the shipment, we are sending to ourselves. This isn’t a visibility issue, this is a control issue.

An In Transit Inventory Control System starts when you order product from your supplier. With Booking, one KWITbox serial carton label is printed and applied to each unit being shipped (eaches, carton, pallet, etc.) and every movement is validated at each step in the process. From the end of your vendors manufacturing line, through all the carriers and consolidation centers, ports and rail yards, In Transit Inventory Control System validates and documents which carton was on each truck, ship, plane or donkey.

Now, when an emergency happens such as a container taking an unscheduled swim to the bottom of the ocean you will know exactly which items, quantities, and orders are lost to the depth. No more spending hours trying to stitch together what might have happened or which shipments will no longer meet their destination.