Restructuring Your Warehouse

You may someday want to restructure your warehouse with new bin codes and new bin characteristics.

You will not undertake this kind of activity very often, but situations can occur where a reclassification is necessary to achieve or maintain a more efficient operation. For example:

  1. You might want to switch to bin codes that support the use of automatic data capture, for example, with hand-held devices.

  2. The warehouse may have purchased a new rack system that gives new possibilities in item storage.

  3. The company may have altered its item assortment and moved the warehouse to a new physical location to accommodate this change.

To Restructure Your Warehouse when Using Bins:

If your warehouse is set up to use bins but not directed put-away and pick, use the following procedure to restructure your warehouse.

  1. Create the new bins that you want to use in the future.

  2. On the location card, set the Default Bin Selection field to Last-Used Bin.

  3. Move all the contents of your current bins to the new bins that you have just created:

Create a line for each of your current bins in the Item Reclassification Journal by using the Get Bin Contents function in the Functions menu. In the New Bin Code field on each line, select the bin to which the items should be moved.  Post the journal.

You have now removed the bins from the warehouse flow, and all their records are maintained in the program.  

If you no longer want to keep the records associated with the old bin, you can simply delete them, if your warehouse permission license allows you to do so.

The default bins for your items have now been changed to the new bins specified in the journal lines.

To Restructure Your Warehouse when Using Directed Put-away and Pick:

  1. Create the new bins that you want to use in the future.

  2. Move all the contents of your current bins to the new bins that you just created:

For the bins where no real movement of items is involved, create a line for each of your current bins in the Warehouse Reclassification Journal with the old bin code (From Bin Code) and the new bin code (To Bin Code).

If some of the movements involve actual physical movements that you want employees to perform, use Movement Worksheets to prepare movement instructions instead of using the reclassification journal.

  1. When the old bins are emptied of all items, reclassify them as “no-flow” type bins. A no-flow type bin is a bin with no check marks in the activity fields in the Bin Types window, see Setting Up Bin Types for more information. The program does not consider no-flow bins for the item flow. To perform this task, click Setup, Locations, Location, Bins, select the bins you want to change, and enter the "no-flow" type in the Bin Type field for each of the old bins.

You have now removed the bins from the warehouse flow, and all their records are maintained in the program. All the bins in the old bin code system must be reclassified as no-flow bins, or the program will continue to use them in the item flow.

If you no longer want to keep the records associated with the old bin, you can simply delete them, if your warehouse permission license allows you to do so.

To Delete a Bin:

  1. Open the Bins window and select the lines for the bins that you want to delete.

  2. Press Delete, and then click Yes to confirm your decision or No to stop the process.

If you click Yes, the bin is deleted for use in the future, but the bin code in all warehouse entries remains the same.

If you want to rename a bin so that all records associated with the bin are also renamed (records include bin contents, warehouse activity lines, registered warehouse activity lines, warehouse worksheet lines, warehouse receipt lines, posted warehouse receipt lines, warehouse shipment lines, posted warehouse shipment lines and warehouse entries), you can do so in the Bins window.

To Rename a Bin and Change the Bin Code in All Records:

  1. Click Setup, Locations, Location, Bins, and place your marker in the Bin Code field of the bin whose code you want to change.

  2. Change the current bin code to the code you want to use in the future.

  3. When you leave the field, the program asks you to confirm whether you really want to change the bin code. Click Yes to confirm, or No to cancel the process.

Note:

If you click Yes and there are many entries concerning this bin (for example, because you have not deleted warehouse documents for some time), it may take the program some time to rename all the records. Therefore, if you use this method, consider running the batch job Delete Registered Whse. Documents before you start the renaming process. Also note that the only documents that are deleted in this batch job are put-aways, picks and movements. If you are renaming a receiving bin or a shipping bin, the program will have to rename all the posted receipts or shipments that refer to the bin in question.

Related Tasks

Deleting Registered Whse. Documents