Cross-Docking Items

Cross-Docking functionality is available to you if you have set up your location to require warehouse receive and put-away processing.

When you cross-dock items, you handle items in receiving and shipping without ever placing them in storage, thereby expediting the item through the put-away and pick processes and limiting the physical handling of items. You can cross-dock items for both shipments and for production orders. When you prepare a shipment or pick items for production and you are using bins, the program will automatically pick the item from a cross-dock bin before it considers picking from any other bin. You must look in the cross-dock area to see if the items you need are available there before you get the items in their usual storage area.

If you have calculated cross-dock quantities, the program creates put-away lines to the cross-dock bin for cross-dock calculations when you post the receipt. Other put-away lines are created as usual.

If you want to post the cross-dock items right away to make them available for picking, you must also register a put-away for the other items originating from the receipt line - those that need to be stored. If only some items on a receipt line are being cross-docked, you must therefore make an effort to put away the remaining items as quickly as possible. Alternately, your warehouse policy could be to encourage cross-docking of entire receipt lines whenever possible.

In the put-away instruction, you can to your advantage delete instruction lines (both Take and Place lines for each receipt line) that concern receipts that are to be fully put away in storage. These lines can later be created as put-away lines from the put-away worksheet or the posted receipt. When they are deleted, you can then put away and register the lines that concern cross-dock items.

If you have placed a check mark in the Use Put-away Worksheet field on the location card and have posted your receipt with calculated cross-docks, all the receipt lines become available in the worksheet. The cross-dock information is lost and cannot be recreated. Therefore, if you wish to use cross-dock functionality, you should relay lines to the put-away worksheet by deleting put-away instructions rather than using the automatic relay function provided in the Use Put-away Worksheet field.

When you post the warehouse receipt (and you do not have a check mark in the Use Put-away Worksheet field), the items to be cross-docked appear as separate lines on the put-away instruction. The Cross-Dock Information field on each put-away line shows whether the line contains cross-dock items, items from the same receipt that all need to be stored, or items that need to be stored originating from a receipt line where some of the items are to be cross-docked. With this field, employees can easily see why the full receipt quantity is not being placed in storage.

The program does not keep separate records about items that have been cross-docked, but registers them as ordinary put-away instructions.

To set up the warehouse for cross-docking:

Cross-docking is only possible if your location is set up to require warehouse receive and put-away processing.

Set up at least one cross-dock bin, if you are using bins. Set up a cross-dock zone, if you are using directed put-away and pick.

A cross-dock bin has a check mark in the Cross-Dock Bin field and must be of the bin type with check marks in both Receive and Pick. See Creating Individual Bins and Setting Up Bin Types, if you need more information. If you are using zones, you will also want to create a zone for your cross-dock bins, and you should therefore place a check mark in the Cross-Dock Bin Zone field. For more information, see Setting Up the Warehouse for Bins.

Open the Location Card window. On the Warehouse tab, place a check mark in the Use Cross-Docking field and fill in the Cross-Dock Due Date Calc. field with the time period that the program will look ahead in to search for cross-dock opportunities. The Use Cross-Docking option is only available if you have placed a check mark in the Require Receive, Require Shipment, Require Pick, and Require Put-away fields.
If you are using bins, on the Bins tab of the location card, fill in the Cross-Dock Bin Code field with the code of the bin you would like to use as the default cross-dock bin.
Open the Stockkeeping Unit Card window. For each item or stockkeeping unit that you want to be able to cross-dock, place a check mark in the Use Cross-Docking field on the Warehouse tab of the item card or stockkeeping unit card.

To Cross-Dock Items Without Viewing the Opportunities:

Open the Warehouse Receipt window and prepare a warehouse receipt for the items that have arrived and that could perhaps be cross-docked. When you have filled in the Qty. to Receive field, click Functions, Calculate Cross-Dock.

The program searches for outbound source documents requesting the items that are scheduled to leave the warehouse within the date formula time period. It assumes that you want to cross-dock as much as possible and avoid having to put items away, but also prevents you from piling up too many items in the cross-dock area. The value in the Qty. to Cross-Dock field is thus the sum of all the outbound lines requesting the item within the look-ahead period minus the quantity of the item that has already been placed in the cross-dock area - or it is the value in the Qty. to Receive field on the receipt line, whichever is smaller. (You cannot cross-dock more than you have received.)

If you want to cross-dock the quantity as suggested, click Posting, Post Receipt. You can also decide to change the quantity to cross-dock to a higher or lower value and then post the receipt..

The amounts to be cross-docked now appear as lines in the put-away instruction (if you have not placed a check mark in the Use Put-away Worksheet field). The quantities not cross-docked also become lines in the put-away instruction.

If you have bins, the program has assigned the cross-docked items to the default cross-dock bin defined on the location card.

Delete the Take and Place lines for items that are not going to be cross-docked at all.
Print the put-away instruction for the remaining lines, and place the quantities of the receipt that need to be stored in the appropriate bins or in the appropriate area of the warehouse. Place the cross-dock items in the area or bin designated for them by warehouse policy. Sometimes, warehouse policy might want you to just leave them in the receiving area.
Now click Registering, Register to register the cross-docked items as being put-away and available for picking.

To Cross-Dock Items After Viewing the Opportunities:

If you want to view the source document lines that are requesting the item before you post the receipt, first run the function Calculate Cross-Docks and then click the AssistButton in the Qty. to Cross-Dock field. The Cross-Dock Opportunities window appears. In this window, you can see the most important details about the lines requesting the item, such as type of document, quantity requested, and due date. This information might help you to decide how much to cross-dock, where to place the items in the cross-dock area, or how to group them.
Click Functions, Autofill Qty. to Cross-Dock to see how the program calculated the quantities on the receipt lines. Then try to change the number of items in the Qty. to Cross-Dock field on each line. The program updates its calculation as you make changes. This does not mean that the particular shipment or production order will actually receive the items being suggested for cross-docking, because these manipulations are for testing purposes only. The process can be informative, however, if more than one unit of measure is involved.
If you want to reserve a quantity of the item for a particular order line, place your cursor on that line, and click Functions, Reserve, which opens the standard reservation window. You can now make a reservation of a quantity of item for this specific order. This reservation is like any other reservation, and does not have higher priority because it was created in connection with cross-docking.
When you are finished recalculating or reserving, click OK to bring the calculation as you have revised it into the Qty. to Cross-Dock field on the receipt line, or click Cancel if you want to return to the warehouse receipt, where you can calculate the cross-dock again if you wish.
Now post the receipt, and you can continue in the put-away instruction as described in steps 3-5 above.

Note:

In the warehouse put-away, you can continue to change the quantities that are being put away in storage or cross-docked, as necessary. For example, you might decide to cross-dock an extra quantity to expedite the cross-dock registration.

Viewing Cross-Docked Items in Shipments or Pick Worksheet:

If you are using bins, you can see, each time you open a shipment or the pick worksheet, an updated calculation of the quantity of each item in the cross-dock bins. This is valuable information if you are waiting for an item to come in. When you see that the item is available in the cross-dock bin, you can then quickly create a pick for all the items on the shipment. In the pick worksheet, you can modify the lines as appropriate and then create a pick.

You have to look for items in the cross-dock area first when you pick items for shipment. If you have noted during the receipt process the source documents that were the basis for cross-docking, you have a better idea of whether the item can be found in the cross-dock area or not.

When a production order has been released, the lines are available in the pick worksheet, and you can see in the Qty. on Cross-Dock Bin field whether the items you are waiting for have arrived and been placed in the cross-dock bins. When you create a pick instruction, the program suggests that you first pick the cross-docked items and will only later search for the item in storage bins.

If you are not using bins, you must remember to check the cross-dock area from time to time, or rely on notifications from receipts that items for production have arrived.