Even before the inventory arrives at the warehouse, the business needs to have accurate tracking of all products for inventory management purposes. It’s data that will be vital in keeping up with everything from production, to the warehouse for fulfillment and ultimately to shipment.
In the fulfillment warehouse, the business will be able to assess how much stock is on hand at any time to make key decisions. If the shelf life of a product is nearing its expiration date, the warehouse can shift things to make sure orders are fulfilled with this inventory first.
Expiring products in a throughput warehouse are categorized as either:
- FIFO – first in, first out inventory
- FEFO – first expired, first out inventory
This is a good way to make sure all products with expiration dates reach customers in time. The fast-pace of e-commerce makes it necessary to have accurate tracking for warehouse throughput processing.
There are also different styles of moving products to consider that will have an impact on your warehouse throughput.
For instance, there is pallet shipping where you might be moving one or more pallets of a single product for single or multiple orders going to the same geographic area. Depending on how many pallets are being dealt with brings into question whether a Less Than Truckload (LTL) or Full Truckload (FTL) would be needed.