The Current Warehouse Management System at Growers Express was initially implemented such that inventory can be wirelessly picked by loaders in the warehouse. It has gone through several iterations, the last being the addition of Full Pallet and Case pick routes along with actual inventory locations. This has greatly increased its efficiency and accuracy. In this phase, they wanted to introduce a standard feature that most professional Dynamics AX Warehouse Management System have; the concept known as “License Plating”. License plating is the term used where each pallet has a unique Id. There all many advantages to license plating including better inventory accuracy and efficiency.

Growers Express’ main objective for implementing the license plating solution was to increase accuracy and efficiency in the day to day operations of their two main distribution centers in Yuma and Salinas. This was a major upgrade where all application processes were changed significantly.

Through the implementation of this solution, with just a simple scan of the pallet Id, it is now possible to determine the warehouse, location, item, lot, receipt date and quantity on any pallet. In the case of a consolidated pallet where more than one item exists, it is now possible to determine the disposition of all items on a pallet. This means that for the first time, Growers Express can now track where each pallet is and what is on it.

Another benefit of the License Plating solution implementation is that all picking transactions within the WMS can now be achieved by scanning the unique pallet id, without the need for scanning the original location. For a consolidated pallet, with one scan a loader can pick multiple items at once, thus increasing efficiency many fold. All item transfers within the WMS can now be achieved by scanning the unique pallet id and the destination location, again without the need for scanning the original location.

For this purpose, we developed the unique pallet Id logic and coded into Grower’s Dynamics AX ERP, so that pallet Ids were synchronized with each and every inventory transaction at the company. We also customized Growers’ inventory transactions within Dynamics AX so that they adhered to a standard transaction set. We also developed and modified the following processes in Growers’ Dynamics AX ERP.

• Unique Pallet Id (based on Serial Shipping Container Code i.e. SSCC)
• Receiving
• Pallet Label Management
• Transfers / Put-away
• Pallet Consolidation
• Pallet Picking
• Case Picking
• New Reports