Receiving is logically the first process to take place in a DC. The goods dispatched from the manufacturing units, vendors, etc are physically taken into the DC. The receiving process may be a manual process in which boxes are physically counted and checked against the dispatch documents. However in a big DC receiving considerable quantity and variety of goods everyday, this process is tedious, time consuming and error prone. Using DCMS this process can be automated and performed efficiently. The receiving process involves following steps.

Importing In-Transit Information

DCMS interfaces with third party software to capture the Advance Shipment Notification (ASN) or material in-transit information. This information may be in any form employed by the organization. In DCMS this information is sent electronically in the form of an ASCII text file in a predefined format. DCMS captures all this information and imports it into the system. This helps DC to be prepared for receiving and verifying the shipment.

Receiving

Pertains to physical receipt of goods or stock units. Refers to time when the cartons containing the SKUs sent from manufacturing units/ vendors are delivered to the DC. For the sake of automation and convenience the cartons are labeled with bar codes. In this process, user scans the bar code and since the system already has in-transit information it automatically knows what items the carton contains. The stock is validated upon receipt against the ASN.

Checking

The checking process employed may vary from one DC to other depending upon the type of products they are dealing with. Some specialty products may demand 100% quality inspection while for some general items random check is required. DCMS provides following processes for checking. Each DC can employ either one or combination of the following processes.