If your manufacturing business is like most today, you are probably always looking for ways to save time, cut costs and run a more efficient company. Have you considered the benefits of receiving shipments from your suppliers with ship manifests that already contain bar codes? Would you like to speed up the receiving process and eliminate re-keying of data? Bar codes are a great place to start. But, how exactly do you start using bar codes?
Recently, I spoke to a manufacturer who determined that over 80% of their suppliers did not have an ability to print bar codes. With many suppliers lacking IT support or even an infrastructure, getting bar codes on products and shipping manifests seemed nearly impossible.
I was able to work with this manufacturer to create a web-based portal solution for it’s supplier. Each supplier was set up with a User ID, which provided access to their specific information, such as part numbers they supply, shipping options, “ship to” locations, and other information required on the ship manifest. Now, the supplier logs in, fills in the quantities and parts to be shipped and then prints the 8.5 by 11 manifest with the barcode to any attached printer. The solution ensures consistency in terms of ship manifests and significant savings for processing in the receiving area.
I took a look at the numbers and did an ROI analysis, discovering that the total of all these savings while using bar codes was over $40,000 annually! This savings was a combination of the time savings in receiving shipments and in the time to manually input the information contained on manifests for shipments received. This savings did not account for savings on the reduction of errors in the manual keying of this data, which, on average across multiple industries is a 5% input error rate. The client’s warehousing systems immediately reflected accurate inventory levels, which is extremely important for any client working with a just-in-time inventory method.
If you’d like to learn more about this web-based solution or other types of barcoding solutions, feel free to contact me at any time.
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