Warehouse Management System (WMS)

Frequently Asked Questions

How does ShipHawk’s WMS show measurable efficiency gains?

Example 1: ShipHawk WMS has analytics tools that provide insights into operator performance across 35 different metrics.

Example 2: ShipHawk WMS has 14 different reports to provide insights on the health of your warehouse operations, including Inventory by bin, Monthly Receiving, Weekly Shipments, and more.

Don’t take our word for it! Take it from our customer Kalalou.

How can we improve inventory accuracy?

Example 1: Multiple modes of Cycle Counting and inventory reconciliation leads to incredibly accurate inventory counts in the warehouse, down to the bin level.

Example 2: License Plating, optimized workflows, cycle counting, and mobile-first architecture allow visibility into every piece of inventory and where it is located in real-time.

How can we reduce costs while increasing throughput?

Proper placement of inventory, as advised by our experts, can reduce travel time and increase space utilization and the amount of staff needed to accomplish the same or more tasks.

How can we reduce travel time?

Example 1: Inventory is placed in the correct areas based on fast or slow inventory turns. ShipHawk WMS will assign the fastest route to pick the assigned items.

Example 2: ShipHawk WMS provides optimal pick allocations to ensure warehouse operators can travel in pick paths up to 10x more efficiently, which increases worker satisfaction and speed of delivery to customers.

How can we improve employee retention?

Why do employees like the ShipHawk WMS interface better?

• Paperless Cloud-Based Solution
• Fewer steps to achieve repetitive tasks
• Intuitive UI
• Data delivered directly to handheld devices and screens move forward on a touch-free scan
• Guided workflows that are flexible enough for warehouse operators to handle exceptions as they arise

What is a way to maximize cube utilization?

Cube utilization is an art, and a science, and mastering this skill can increase efficiencies and dramatically increase the volume of inventory that can be held at one location. This, in turn, makes every square foot of the warehouse perform better. Our professional service team will help you learn to master this art.

How can we increase customer satisfaction?

When your team is able to work faster and more efficiently to receive, pick, and ship as many products as possible accurately and on time, your customers win.

How is ShipHawk’s Cross Docking different?

When a product is simultaneously being received and ordered at the warehouse, instead of spending precious time putting it away in an inventory bin and then immediately sending someone else to pick the item – ShipHawk WMS’ cross-dock functionality allows a warehouse to fulfill orders directly during receiving.

Example: Product 1 has just been received at the warehouse and Order A has open quantities of Product 1 to fulfill, and an additional Purchase Order has just arrived for Product 1. Instead of putting Product 1 away in the warehouse, ShipHawk WMS notifies the receiving operator that Product 1 is needed for Order A. The receiving operator can then immediately bring Product 1 to the appropriate place in the warehouse to fulfill Order A and get it to the customer ASAP and save the travel time.

What is Cycle Counting and the variations I should know about?

This feature is typically only found in tier 1 WMS solutions, and it is included in the ShipHawk WMS, and this incredible capability is delivered for a fraction of the cost.
For operations that want or require incredibly accurate inventory, ShipHawk WMS cycle counting functionality is flexible and has multiple modes to fit an operation’s needs.
A proper cycle counting policy can eliminate year-end inventory counting. The ShipHawk WMS removes or transfers a unit from inventory the moment it is picked from a bin, ensuring cycle counting is accurate at the bin level, as well as in your ERP, even before it has shipped.

ShipHawk WMS supports three types of cycle counting:

• • Directed Cycle Counting

Directed Cycle Counting will guide the operator from bin to bin, in a sequenced manner, according to the rules/filters defined, count plan requirements, and the current count state of each bin. Filters can be defined by the operator upon initiating the feature to drive a multitude of options, including:

• • • Specific bin, aisle, or area of the warehouse
    • Specific Item or Item Family
    • Bin inventory threshold
    • Specific count plan
    • Recount threshold
    • Bins with no activity
    • Empty or non-empty bins

Tip: Using the “empty bin” or “low inventory” count filters, an operation can quickly verify the count for all low inventory and/or empty bins in the warehouse. This is a tremendous benefit for two reasons: (1) it is extremely easy and fast to verify a low inventory count or empty bin, and (2) low inventory bins are the most vulnerable to an unexpected stock out based on an inventory inaccuracy.

If any count varies from what is expected, the count will immediately show up on the Resolve Count Discrepancies page (discussed below) for an authorized operator to review and accept or recount.

• • Manual Cycle Counting

Manual Cycle Counting allows the operator to simply scan/enter a bin and perform a count. ShipHawk WMS will not direct the operator to a bin, rather, the operator simply chooses the bin to count. No preparation is required at all, simply scan a Bin, scan an Item, enter a count, and move on. If the count varies from what is expected, the count will immediately show up on the Resolve Count Discrepancies page (discussed below) for an authorized operator to review and accept or recount.

• • Short Pick Cycle Counting

Anytime an inventory discrepancy is detected, a cycle count task will be recorded into the resolve cycle counting queue and scheduled to the next available operator to review based on the rules established.

It is vital to know that counting inventory in a bin will always reconcile with your system during live operations to prevent short and long-term and sometimes costly,  discrepancies.

Real-time Inventory Management by Bin

With ShipHawk WMS, inventory is reduced from a picking bin when you pick an order.
You can know exactly where an inventory item is at all times, whether it is in a bin and/or a container. The container may be a tote moving across the warehouse floor, or it might be the final box/pallet the item will be in until it is shipped. The bin may be a bin on a shelf in the warehouse, or it may be a special bin such as the PACK or SHIP bin. Using these specially assigned bins, you can know immediately where the item is on the floor or in a warehouse shelf bin or at the Packing or Shipping station. Once the item is shipped, the ERP quantity is updated along with shipping information such as the tracking number.

Optimized for the scanning environment

Your warehouse operators will almost never need to touch the handheld device screen. ShipHawk WMS is more intuitive and able to move products around the warehouse faster and with less friction. Operators will scan 20 individual items versus typing in 20, which is faster in our system and more accurate than stopping to type in 20. This setting can be optimized for the picker’s use case

What is Pick Optimization?

Pick optimization insightfully groups orders together into different workflows which minimize travel, minimize handling, and maximize fulfillment accuracy during the pick process. Orders are grouped based on their profiles (size and composition), commonality, packing and shipping requirements, and much more. ShipHawk WMS will leverage up to six different pick optimization techniques to fill these groups as described below.

• SUPER BATCH PICKING: While it would be great if we could always get large numbers of identical orders to pick together (a classic Batch Pick noted below), this is the exception in most operations and not the norm. More commonly, operations need to process small sets of identical orders, making classic Batch Picking less efficient; however, in ShipHawk WMS, we will group together these small sets of identical orders into Super Batches (on a single cart) so that the pick tour will accumulate inventory, for example, for 5 orders for item A, 3 orders for item B, 4 orders for item C, etc. It would not be uncommon to be able to pick 30-40 orders across 8 batches with a single pick tour, dramatically improving productivity.
• BATCH PICKING: As the name implies, when we have a popular item and capture, for example, 10 or more identical orders, the operator will be directed to pick that entire quantity with one pick and deliver that inventory to quickly and seamlessly pack and ship those orders with perfect accuracy. ShipHawk offers many variations on Batch Picking to include single-line-single-unit workflows that accurately fulfill a large number of orders with a single pick tour through the warehouse or a particular work zone.
• CLUSTER PICKING: When the operation is presented with many multi-line-multi-unit orders, such orders can be picked together during a single pick tour while maintaining order integrity in individual totes on a cart. ShipHawk WMS will ensure that the orders assigned to each cart minimize the pick tour travel path and maximize the commonality of picks, minimizing the time to complete these tasks. When the cart is delivered to packing, each order is processed efficiently and accurately from each tote on the cart.
• WAVE PICKING: At times, it is desirable to pull all the inventory forward for a single wave containing many orders and then pack out each order from that inventory. This is particularly effective if a put-to-light is being used.
• CONSOLIDATION PICKING: If multiple orders exist in the system at once for a single customer or ship-to address, it may be desirable to group these into a consolidated pick where they are picked together in a single pick tour. Of course, this consolidation would carry through the packing and shipping process, making the entire process more efficient and reducing your shipping costs.
• ORDER PICKING: Of course, there are always order profiles that warrant a simple order pick, and ShipHawk WMS will certainly support this foundation concept with efficient travel path routing, paperless priority-based task scheduling, effortless exception handling, and easy-to-understand workflows for this basic picking method.

What can you tell me about ShipHawk License Plating?

Our license plating offers real-time tracking of all inventory at all times. For Example, if you put an ID tag on a pallet, place it in the correct location in the warehouse. Once items are assigned to that pallet, they can then be depleted, replenished, or moved to new locations, and the complete life cycle on that pallet will be stored in the WMS.