This chapter covers the following topics:
Crossdocking of inbound receipts to outbound shipments is widely used in warehouses to achieve faster flow-through times and optimize warehouse resources. You can match scheduled receipts to inbound shipments minutes, hours, or days in advance. This reduces material handling costs and decreases flow-through times. Oracle Warehouse Management supports two types of crossdocking, planned crossdocking and opportunistic crossdocking.
Planned Crossdocking: In planned crossdocking, the system identifies a suitable supply source for a given demand source. Planned crossdocking is typically used in the following environments:
Engineer to order, procure to order, or make to order environments, where you create a supply source to satisfy a particular demand. In this situation, a one-to-one relationship exists between the supply source and the demand source.
High-volume retail distribution center environments where you receive items from vendors with pre-allocation to a demand source. Sometimes the containers the vendors send have the store marking and identification label. This functionality applies to retail and 3PL industry verticals.
Opportunistic Crossdocking: Opportunistic Crossdocking involves dynamic allocation of an incoming supply source to a demand source on receipt. The system postpones the crossdock assignment until you receive the material into the warehouse. In opportunistic crossdocking, the system identifies a suitable demand source for a given supply source. Oracle Warehouse Management uses business rules, time fences, and priorities to choose the demand source for the incoming material. It considers all demand sources with a demand date that is within the time fence for crossdocking. Opportunistic crossdocking is used in the following environments:
Just in Time (JIT) manufacturing environment, where material received from vendors through inbound trailers is Crossdocked directly to manufacturing.
Flow-through shipping environments, where material from inbound trailers is crossdocked directly to waiting outbound trailers. This process works well when a small number of incoming orders are used to fulfill a small number of outbound orders.
You can perform crossdocking only if a reasonable time interval separates supply and demand. To perform crossdocking, you must receive the supply prior to the scheduled demand shipment date. A sufficient time between the receipt and the shipment must exist so that you can process, unload, and load the material as well as print the required documents such as the bill of lading and labels.
You should not crossdock material that you receive too far in advance of the shipment because the material could occupy dock space for an undesired length of time.
Crossdock Criteria determines the eligible supply and demand sources for crossdocking. You use crossdock criteria for both planned and opportunistic crossdocking. Crossdock criteria represent the business rules on which the system makes crossdocking decisions. Crossdock criteria include which supply and demand documents are eligible for crossdocking, and the relative priority of these documents. You can also use crossdock criteria to define a crossdock window. The crossdock window identifies the supply or demand sources as crossdock candidates based on their expected ship date or receipt date.
Related Topics
Crossdock Criteria, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide
You can use crossdocking with advanced task framework to assign an operation plan to crossdock material to a staging lane. The system links a crossdock operation plan to an outbound operation plan. This link determines the outbound operation plan the material needs to follow through the warehouse. You can link the crossdock activity in the inbound operation plan to one of the four outbound operation plan types: LPN-based consolidation, locator-based consolidation, locator and LPN-based consolidation and staging locator-based consolidation.
Related Topics
Consolidation, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide
Set up Operation Plans, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide
Advanced task framework enables you to consolidate on-hand material with crossdock material. For example, if you fulfill a delivery line with crossdock material, and another through on-hand material, you can consolidate the material in a consolidation locator and pack it prior to shipping. Consolidation ensures the innermost LPN contains items that belong to a single delivery in the consolidation locator. Once you stage LPNs in staging lanes, or are in the process of staging LPNs, you can further consolidate material into an outer LPN. This outer LPN can contain LPNs that belong to various deliveries.
The crossdock method dictates whether you can consolidate material across deliveries and when consolidation occurs in the operation plan.
Related Topics
Consolidation, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide
The system invokes planned crossdocking during pick release for sales order lines. During pick release, you can choose the crossdock criteria from the pick release window, or the system uses the rules workbench to determine the proper crossdock criteria.
To perform planned crossdocking, you must establish the crossdocking time fences for each order line. Crossdock time fences are different for each order line, and the order line scheduled shipment date determines the crossdock time fence.
The crossdock time fences determine the earliest and the latest time within which you must receive an order to consider it for crossdocking. The system uses the scheduled shipment date of the order line to determine the crossdock time window. It uses the order processing time, buffer time, and crossdock window to perform backward scheduling. In other words, the scheduled shipment date is offset backwards by order processing time, buffer time, and finally the crossdock window. The system considers only the eligible supply sources that occur within the Crossdock Window as candidates for crossdocking. Once the system identifies the crossdocking candidates, it uses the crossdocking goals to select a supply source.
Oracle Warehouse Management invokes opportunistic crossdocking when it generates putaway suggestions. During putaway, if you enable opportunistic crossdocking, the system uses the rules workbench to determine the crossdock criteria. If the system does not find crossdock criteria, then it uses the organization default crossdock criteria.
To identify a crossdock demand, you must establish the crossdocking time fences. The system uses the current date to establish crossdock time fence. Crossdock time fences determine the earliest and the latest time within which you can consider a demand for crossdock. The system uses the current date and time, the order processing time, the buffer time, and the crossdock window to perform forward scheduling. In other words, the current date and time is offset forward by order processing time, buffer time, and the crossdock window. The system considers only the eligible demand sources that occur within the crossdock window for crossdocking. Once the system identifies the crossdocking candidates, it uses the appropriate crossdocking goal to select a demand source.
When pick release identifies a planned crossdock opportunity, it creates a reservation that links supply and demand.
To enable crossdocking, you must perform the following setups:
Create crossdock criteria.
Assign crossdocking criteria in the rules workbench.
Determine crossdock priority at pick release.
When you create crossdock criteria you must determine the criterion type. The criterion type indicates whether the crossdock plan is for planned crossdocking or opportunistic crossdocking. A planned crossdocking criterion identifies a supply from amongst a pool of eligible supply sources for a given demand source. An opportunistic crossdocking criterion identifies a demand from amongst a pool of eligible demand sources for a given supply source.
When supply or a demand has a dock appointment, the system derives the scheduled receipt date or the scheduled shipment date from the dock schedule. The receipt date or shipment date could be:
Earliest Appointment Time: This implies that if an appointment is scheduled between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., then the system uses the earliest appointment for the scheduled receipt or shipment time for crossdocking. In this example, the system uses 2:00 p.m. as the scheduled appointment time.
Latest Appointment Time: This implies that if an appointment is scheduled between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., then the system uses the latest appointment as the scheduled receipt or shipment time for crossdocking. In this example, the system uses 4:00 p.m. as the scheduled appointment time.
Mean Appointment Time: This implies that if an appointment is scheduled between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., then the system uses an average of the from and to appointment time as the scheduled receipt or shipment time for crossdocking. In this example, the system uses 3:00 p.m. as the scheduled appointment time.
If a dock appointment does not exist for either the supply or the demand, you can still crossdock the supply or the demand. Usually, schedule receipt date or the shipment date is firm, but the time of arrival or departure is flexible and can be controlled if a suitable crossdock opportunity exists. Planned and opportunistic crossdocking criteria allow you to schedule crossdocking without appointments as follows:
Schedule demand anytime on shipment date: This implies that crossdock criteria allow scheduling flexibility during a one day window for the demand if an outbound dock schedule does not exist. The system assumes that a sales order can be scheduled any time during the day. You can use crossdock planning to create a dock schedule for outbound deliveries based on the crossdock planning outcome.
Schedule supply anytime on promise date: This implies that crossdock criteria allow scheduling flexibility during a one day window for the supply if an inbound dock schedule does not exist. The system assumes that a purchase order can be scheduled any time during the day. You can use crossdock planning to create dock schedule for inbound deliveries based on the crossdock planning outcome. The supply reschedule allowed parameter is irrelevant for opportunistic crossdocking.
Unlike allocation rules, crossdocking criteria are relatively simple. You can specify crossdock criteria to an item, item category, customer, customer, category, vendor, or vendor category. The rules workbench enables you to define a search sequence for crossdock criteria. This is similar to how pick and putaway strategies are allocated to objects.
You can specify an allocation method during pick release to indicate whether you need to use crossdocking to fulfill an order, and if crossdocking has priority over fulfillment from on- hand stock. This indicates whether the system uses crossdocking or on-hand stock to fulfill an order. You can specify one of the following allocation methods:
Inventory Only: Indicates that allocation is performed against on-hand stock.
Crossdock Only: Indicates that orders are fulfilled using crossdocking.
Prioritize Inventory: Indicates that orders are fulfilled first using on-hand inventory, and crossdocking is used to fulfill residual demand.
Prioritize Crossdock: Indicates that orders are fulfilled first using crossdock, and on-hand inventory is used to fulfill residual demand.
The Crossdock Criteria field is enabled when the fulfillment strategy involves crossdocking. This field is optional. If you enter a crossdock criteria in this field, then the system uses the crossdock criteria for all delivery lines in the pick batch.
Can you auto-create a delivery for material that is identified for planned crossdocking?
You can auto-create a delivery for planned crossdock material if you set auto-create delivery during pick release.
Will the crossdocked material always be staged to a default staging lane and subinventory?
No. You can use advanced task framework and putaway rules to identify the staging lane and subinventory.
What happens if crossdocking is implemented in a project manufacturing organization?
If you set the organization parameter Allow Across project and Task Fulfillment, crossdock planning ignores the project and task information. Crossdock execution ensures that a project transfer occurs in the crossdock operation of the operation plan. If you do not enable the organization parameter Allow Across Project and Task Fulfillment, then crossdock planning ensures that demand and supply belong to the same project and task.
If a reservation exists between supply and demand that belong to a different project and task, then the system disregards the reservation for crossdocking.
Can I change the supply and demands sources after crossdock decision is made?
You can make changes prior to material receipt; however, existing crossdocking decisions remain. If quantity of a demand or supply is reduced, then the crossdock reservation quantity is reduced. If supply sources are linked to multiple reservations, then the first system consumes the reservation against the latest supply. If a supply or demand is cancelled then the system deletes the crossdock decision. If a supply quantity for a supply document that is planned for crossdock is reduced, then the demand balance quantity needs to be replanned for crossdocking, or fulfilled using inventory. After you receive material, you must cancel the crossdock decision before you can make changes to demand.
Returns, corrections and inspection may reduce the supply quantity. If this occurs, then the reserved quantity is reduced and the demand balance quantity needs to be replanned for crossdocking, or fulfilled using inventory.
How can I cancel crossdock decision after crossdock planning?
If you have not received the material in the warehouse, you can delete the reservation that links the supply and demand. This automatically cancels crossdocking. If you received the material, then you can use the warehouse control board to cancel the task.
Related Topics
Warehouse Organization Parameters
Explaining the Warehouse Control Board, Oracle Warehouse Management User's Guide