Crossdock overview

Crossdock is the process by which items are either picked or moved directly from the inbound dock to the outbound dock, avoiding storage and replenishment processes. Crossdocking increases inventory velocity, which reduces staffing and equipment needs, space requirements, and inventory carrying costs. The crossdock feature supports three main types of crossdock handling:

Flow Thru

With the flow thru process, the warehouse receives quantities into inventory and runs a flow thru allocation process to designate items to outbound vehicles.

Infor SCE Warehouse Management has three main flow thru methods:

  • PO Linked

    Flow Thru orders are directly linked to a specific purchase order and ASN.

  • Opportunistic

    The application looks for opportunities to fill shipment orders with items currently being received.

  • Manual

    Distribution center personnel manually assign order details of a shipment order to become eligible for opportunistic crossdock.

    WM Crossdock currently supports PO-linked flow thru. The PO-linked flow thru process typically begins when a buyer creates a series of flow thru orders for an item that corresponds directly with a PO. The application can also process flow thru orders that are not directly linked to a PO.

Crossdock supports host interface transactions for flow thru orders. A flow thru order file is used in the API transmittal of flow thru orders between the buyer, vendor, and the application.

The flow thru process involves five main warehousing operations in the following order:

Opportunistic crossdock

Opportunistic crossdock occurs when the application compares the quantity of an item that has arrived at a facility with qualifying open order lines for that item existing in the facility. Using configuration in the application, the application triggers allocation and fulfillment of shipment order lines at the time of receipt, which can potentially shorten the order fulfillment cycle. The application configuration for crossdock is set for the warehouse and the owner.

Transship

Transship orders arrive at the warehouse ready for shipment. Transship orders are pre-designated to customers before entering the crossdock facility.

Transship containers are recorded as received and shipped with the next delivery to the customer. Items in these containers are not stored in warehouse inventory records.

Vendors using the transship method of order distribution typically provide discounts for this service.

The transship process involves three main warehousing operations in the following order: