I'm hoping someone here can offer some advice to my problems at work which distributes car parts, any input will help at this point.
Ethos of managment:
The owner of our company has long used a hard-copy/paper based system for the bulk of the systems within both the office and warehouse, though it is probably the safest way to keep everything it's a real bottle-neck at various points in every system. With money not available to research and install new systems I'm hoping to find some ideas from you kind folk.
Main bottleneck, picking dockets:
This is the most time consuming process, our customers phone our sales staff and place their orders, in-turn the picking docket prints in the warehouse at which point a worker is guided around the building by a bin-location system. After the goods are boxed the receipt side of the docket is placed in a tray, this is where it gets messy.
Proof of dispatch:
At the moment the only way I can tell if the order was dispatched or not picked is to collect the dockets at the end of the day and arrange them(several hundred)into sequence and cross check each docket against the print report, first they are arranged into sequence and then a missing docket number is easily seen if I flick through the bundle - as you can imagine this is a pain in the neck, honestly.
Invoicing:
After I have gotten proof of picking and dispatch I can then send the paper inside to the unlucky person who's job is to invoice the pile of crap I've just handed him, looooong nights.
What I have tried:
Barcode Scanners. My main grief with these baby's is that the customer is relying on the worker to invoice the order. The system in use at the time required the worker to input every.single.part number and quantity and having people stand around for five or so minutes whilst having a chat with another worker at the same thing is not very efficient.
Yelp! before I go insane again!
Ethos of managment:
The owner of our company has long used a hard-copy/paper based system for the bulk of the systems within both the office and warehouse, though it is probably the safest way to keep everything it's a real bottle-neck at various points in every system. With money not available to research and install new systems I'm hoping to find some ideas from you kind folk.
Main bottleneck, picking dockets:
This is the most time consuming process, our customers phone our sales staff and place their orders, in-turn the picking docket prints in the warehouse at which point a worker is guided around the building by a bin-location system. After the goods are boxed the receipt side of the docket is placed in a tray, this is where it gets messy.
Proof of dispatch:
At the moment the only way I can tell if the order was dispatched or not picked is to collect the dockets at the end of the day and arrange them(several hundred)into sequence and cross check each docket against the print report, first they are arranged into sequence and then a missing docket number is easily seen if I flick through the bundle - as you can imagine this is a pain in the neck, honestly.
Invoicing:
After I have gotten proof of picking and dispatch I can then send the paper inside to the unlucky person who's job is to invoice the pile of crap I've just handed him, looooong nights.
What I have tried:
Barcode Scanners. My main grief with these baby's is that the customer is relying on the worker to invoice the order. The system in use at the time required the worker to input every.single.part number and quantity and having people stand around for five or so minutes whilst having a chat with another worker at the same thing is not very efficient.
Yelp! before I go insane again!