1 Overview to Advanced Warehouse Management
This chapter contains these topics:
1.1 System Integration
The Advanced Warehouse Management system is an integral part of your manufacturing and distribution processes. It works in conjunction with the Inventory Management and Shop Floor Control systems to manage your inventory and the products that you produce and ship. The Advanced Warehouse Management system does not create any accounting records of its own. Instead, the system uses records that are created by other JD Edwards World systems to help you keep accurate financial records of your warehouse transactions. This minimizes the number of duplicate records and mismatched data, reduces the hardware requirements for your system, and increases your system's performance.
The Advanced Warehouse Management system can exchange data with the following JD Edwards World systems:
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Sales Order Management
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Inventory Management
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Procurement
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Shop Floor Control
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Configuration Management
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Requirements Planning
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Enterprise Facility Planning
1.2 Features
The Advanced Warehouse Management system controls many aspects of warehouse operations, from receiving and storing items to retrieving and shipping them. You can design your warehouse to make the most of your available space, your employees' time, and the unique storage requirements of the goods that you stock. You can structure your warehouse in almost limitless detail, so you can know exactly where everything is and the exact quantity you have on hand. This allows you to maintain a continuous flow of goods and gives you the competitive edge in delivering goods to your customers quickly and efficiently.
Some of the most important features of the Advanced Warehouse Management system are:
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User-defined rules for stock movement
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User-defined parameters for items and locations to control stock movement
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Fixed and random locations for more efficient stock movement
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Automatic shipping carton selection during picking
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Ability to review warehouse contents using up to nine levels of detail
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Manual or automatic storage, picking, and replenishment of stock
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Audit trail reporting of inventory movement
With the Advanced Warehouse Management system, you can:
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Create a logical model of your warehouse in as much detail as you need by specifying such characteristics as location dimensions, temperature, humidity, and lighting
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Create a logical model of each item in your warehouse to allow the system to match items to storage locations based on the characteristics of the items and locations
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Control how stock is stored, picked, and replenished by setting up rules for the system to follow
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Move stock to and from specific locations using manual input or automatic system-generated suggestions
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Use random locations for storage by allowing the system to track inventory for you
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Generate an audit trail of reports for each stock movement
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Sequence your employees' trips through the warehouse to maximize their productivity
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Confirm stock movement with minimal data-entry keystrokes
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Share stock movement data with other JD Edwards World systems to answer inquiries and improve customer service
The Advanced Warehouse Management system is extremely flexible because it can use more than fifty different parameters of locations, items, and rules to move your inventory. Some of Advanced Warehouse Management's features follow.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Profiles of locations and items | For each item and location in your warehouse, you define a profile. For items, you can define many parameters and characteristics that control how the system moves the item. For locations, you can define parameters and characteristics that control the location's suitability for storing, picking, or replenishing items. |
| Rule-based storage, picking, and replenishment | The Advanced Warehouse Management system is rule-driven. You can set up movement rules that are based on a variety of factors, including:
You can define as many rules as you need for different business purposes. |
| Automatic replenishment of locations | The system monitors every location in your warehouse and can trigger stock movements to replenish your picking locations automatically when you deplete stock quantities to a point that you define. |
| Movement path sequencing | You can design traffic patterns in your warehouse to reduce congestion and structure your stock movements to use each employee's trip through the warehouse most efficiently. |
| Units of measure | You can choose locations according to the item's unit of measure to ensure the best fit and maximization of your available warehouse space. You can also allow the system to combine or break down units of measure to speed up inventory movement or maximize utilization of locations. |
| First In First Out picking | You can move your oldest inventory first using date-of-receipt tags and expiration date codes. |
1.3 Detailed Information
The Advanced Warehouse Management system stores its information in the following tables. You can update these as needed.
| Table | Description |
|---|---|
| Branch/Plant Constants (F41001) | Contains information for day-to-day transactions, including:
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| Location Master (F4100) | Contains basic information about each warehouse location. |
| Location Dimensions (F46022) | Contains the dimensions and maximum weight capacity of location dimension groups. |
| Item Master (F4101) | Contains basic information about each item, including:
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| Item Specific Unit of Measure Conversion (F41002) | Contains the unit of measure conversion equations that are unique to the warehouse item and its unit of measure structure information. |
| Location Characteristics (F46021) | Contains a list of characteristics that you use in random movement instructions. |
| Location Capacity (F46024) | Contains the quantity of an item (or an item group) that will fit into each location. |
| Allowed Containers by Location (F46026) | Contains a list of the containers that you allow to exist in each location. |
| Standard Unit Of Measure Conversion (F41003) | Contains the unit of measure conversion equations that are common to all warehouse items. |
| Item Branch (F4102) | Contains default item information, including each item's process and dimension groups, and other parameters that are common to every unit of that item in your warehouse. |
| Item Location (F41021) | Contains each item's quantity, general ledger class, and lot status in each location. |
| Item Profile (F46010) | Contains a profile of every item in the warehouse. |
| Item Unit Of Measure Profile (F46011) | Contains every unit of measure for each item in the warehouse. |
| Warehouse Requests (F4600) | Contains putaway, pick, and replenishment requests for inventory movement. |
| Task Header (F4601) | Contains inventory movement requests and the corresponding trips that warehouse employees make to fulfill the requests. |
| Warehouse Putaway Reservations (F460130) | Contains locations that you reserved for storage of a particular item. |
| Warehouse Suggestions (F4611) | Contains putaway, pick, and replenishment suggestions for inventory movement. |
| Location Detail Information (F4602) | Contains the items, quantities, and units of measure that exist in each location. |
| Item Ledger (F4111) | Contains a history of all inventory movements. |
| Inclusion Rules (F34004) | Contains the order types (sales, purchase, and so on) and the order statuses that the system processes. |
| Process Selection Rules (F46093) | Contains information about warehouse process and order groups and the movement instructions that you match to each set of groups. |
| Movement Instructions (F46095) | Contains information, such as zones and tiebreakers, about how the system chooses locations for putaway, picking, or replenishment. |
| Order Groups (F46092) | Contains order types that you assign to a group to use in the Process Selection Rules table. |
| Unit Of Measure Groups (F46096) | Contains units of measure that you assign to a group to use in the Movement Instructions table. |
| Fixed Locations (F46012) | Contains locations that you use only for putaway, only for picking, or only for replenishment. |
| Random Tables (F46822) | Contains characteristics that you match to location characteristics to create a table of valid random locations. |
| Random Locations (F46821) | Contains a list of valid random locations that match the characteristics you defined in a random rule. |
| Container and Carton Codes (F46091) | Contains a list of containers and cartons and their dimensions and weights. |
| Carton Recommendation Rules (F46013) | Contains information about the quantity of each item that will fit in each carton, so the system can recommend cartons for shipping. |
| Maximum Putaway Quantity By Zone (F46025) | Contains the maximum quantity of each item that you allow in each zone. |
| Fixed Replenishment Zones (F46051) | Contains a list of zones from which you allow the system to replenish fixed picking locations. |
| Default Location/Printers (F40095) | Contains the default warehouse code (branch/plant) and the default printer output queue for transactions that you process through the subsystem. |
| Distribution/ Manufacturing Constants (F4009) | Contains information that specifies whether the item unit of measure conversions are unique for each item or applicable to each item in the warehouse. |
