Transfers

Introduction

The ‘Transfers’ function within V5 Traceability enables businesses with multiple site operations to maintain accurate inventory levels when transferring between sites.

Control Center features a scheduling tool to allow management to control what inventory requires moving and the timescale for the pick. V5 WMS users can view the transfer orders and begin the pick, pack, and ship operation.

Upon inventory transfer, V5 Traceability tracks the ‘In Transit’ inventory and generates an internal BOL to assist the recipient with the relocation of moved inventory.

This module guide will look at how users can set these up in Control Center, and then process them in V5 WMS.

1. Initial Setup
   1. Transfer Addresses
   2. Transfer Locations
2.  Transfer Setup
3. Shipping Transfers
4. Receiving Transfers
5. Direct Transfers
   1. Direct Transfer Setup
   2. Shipping a Direct Transfer
6. Creating Transfers in WMS
7. Wave Picking Transfers
8. Transfers in Reports

In this example we are going to imagine that our business has a main delivery hub for a region, and from here, ingredients need to be transferred to nearby production facilities, of which we may have several. In order to select these facilities for use with Transfers, we first need to have them set up as either ‘Suppliers’ or ‘Customers’ (it doesn’t matter which) with an address entered against them (these entries will not be available for transfers if there is no address entered against them as a supplier/customer). We can see here that our ‘Distribution Hub’ has been set up as a customer and has the relevant address entered against it.

We would also do the same for our ‘Manufacturing Co.’, which is where we will be transferring our ingredients to.

Please note that for newer versions of Control Center, site addresses can be entered for selection in the ‘Site Addresses’ window, found under the same ‘Ordering’ header that we find ‘Transfers’.

The next step is to look at our WMS instances that will be processing this transfer. For this example we have one WMS tablet at our storage facility which receives purchase orders and ships out transfers, and another at the production facility that will receive the transfers in for production. In order to demonstrate transfers correctly, we will assign our storage WMS (New Warehouse 1) to the Production Location ‘OFF SITE WAREHOUSE 1’ and Storage Location ‘SW1′ (Storage Warehouse 1).

Likewise, we will assign our production WMS (WMS1) to the Production Location ‘MANUFACTURING 1’ and Storage Location ‘GEN’.

A location with code ‘IN_TRANSIT’  must also be created to facilitate the transfer process. The system will then use this by default to hold transfers while they are in transit. This can be changed to allow other locations to act as the ‘in transit’ location.

Now we can look at setting up our transfer in the ‘Transfers’ tab under the ‘Ordering’ header (1). Here we can use the top panel controls to add (2) a new transfer order into this panel. We can then begin populating the order by selecting our distribution hub from the ‘Transfer From’ drop-down menu (3). This will populate the ‘from’ address cells, populated from the customer/supplier information we saw earlier.

We can then scroll along the top row and select our manufacturing hub from the drop-down menu in the ‘Transfer To’ cell. We will notice though that our row still remains salmon-colored due to the setup not being complete yet. To complete this setup we need to enter both a to and from location, which are located by default at the end of the ‘to’ address section. We will select the 2 production locations that we assigned to our WMS devices earlier.

We can now head to the bottom panel and use the panel’s controls to add (1) a new line to the transfer order. Here we can select the desired commodity (2) from the drop-down menu in either the ‘Commodity Code’ or ‘Commodity Description’ column.

We can also add the desired quantity to transfer here (3). We will look at transferring the 500lb pallet we just received in this case.

Note here how you cannot edit the ‘Qty Shipped’ and ‘Qty Received’ values as these must be processed by the system. We will come back to look at the bottom right panel once we have completed the transfer.

Once we have finished setting up the transfer here, in a similar way to purchase/sales orders, we can right click the transfer line in the top panel and hit schedule to allow the transfer to be visible to the relevant WMS devices.

With our transfer now scheduled, we can head over to our distribution hub WMS and, after hitting the ‘Ordering’ tile (1), select ‘Transfer Orders’ from the next menu (2).

This will open the transfer menu, and if there are active transfers associated with the linked production location of our WMS device, we will be able to see the transfer.

Selecting this line and hitting the green check will proceed to the next stage, where we can assign our stock.

As with things like sales orders, we can hit any of the line items to pick (here we obviously only have one) and proceed to the next step. Here we can scan an appropriate pallet that contains the correct amount of flour. This will add the required 500lbs to the transfer order.

Note how the pallet has now been moved to the ‘IN_TRANSIT’ location. We can then hit the green check at the bottom again in order to complete this part of the transfer process. Once this is done, the transfer is considered ‘In Transit’

If we now return to Control Center, we can see that our bottom right panel has now been filled by a line showing that the pallet of flour has been transferred out. Our ‘Qty Shipped’ has also been populated after dispatching the transfer.

The transfer has now arrived at our manufacturing facility, so if we log onto the WMS device here and head to transfers as we did before, we can see how we can now receive this.

Had we checked this menu on this device earlier, our transfer would not be visible as it had not been dispatched, but now we will see it waiting to be received.

In a similar way to purchase orders, we will see the commodity receiving screen, awaiting our 500lbs of flour.

We can hit the line item of the flour to bring this into stock. On the next screen we will see the pallet that the system is waiting for. With this highlighted we can hit the green plus icon to allow us to scan this in.

We can then choose the location to book this stock into. In this case we will choose the stock location that we assigned to this WMS device. Any other stock locations assigned to the device will also be visible. After this we’ll be returned to the commodity receiving screen, where, if present, we can receive any other commodities on the transfer.

When we are happy with everything we have received, we can hit the green check again and confirm that we have received the transfer and wish to complete the process.

Returning to Control Center, we can now see that we now have a ‘PALLET TRANSFER IN’ line that has been added, and in the bottom left panel we can see confirmation that 500lbs of flour was indeed received.

The above transfer process is useful when we have a WMS device at each end of the transfer to move stock out and in. However, what happens if there isn’t one at the receiving end? This could be the scenario if we want to transfer stock to a 3^rd party facility that do not operate V5 Traceability. So how can we make this work? This is where ‘direct transfers’ come in.

We would go about setting this up in much the same way as a regular transfer above. This time however, when we are creating it in Control Center, we do not need to enter an address under the ‘Transfer To’ column. Instead we would need to make sure that the ‘Direct Transfer’ box is checked, and that we have selected our ‘To Location’ as our ‘THIRD PARTY WH’ in this case.

Again this location must be set up as a ‘Production Location’. Let’s imagine that we are transferring produced goods here for storage. We will add 100 of our ‘Saffron Kulfi 12 packs’ to this transfer, and schedule it in the same way as we did for the regular transfer above.

Again we will head to the transfers section after hitting the ‘Ordering’ tile. We can see that the direct transfer box is checked for this transfer.

If we hit the green check to proceed, we will see the same picking screen as in the example above. This time however, we are transferring a non-palletized good, so instead of scanning a pallet, we will be scanning lots to fill the transfer requirements.

Depending on the WMS settings, we will be asked to key enter or weigh the amount. Since we are dealing with finished products we will key in 100.

With the transfer lines fulfilled, we can once again use the green check at the bottom right to complete the transfer.

The transfer will now be marked as received in Control Center, and we will be able to see the quantity moved out and shipped.

We can now see on our ‘Manage Inventory’ screen that this lot has now been moved to our third part warehouse.

In all the examples so far, we have been using Control Center to create and schedule these transfers. We can though, with the correct permissions set against the active user, create these in WMS itself. Let’s take a look at this now.

If we go to the main transfers window as we’ve outlined above, if no transfers are scheduled then we won’t see anything here. However, we can use the green plus in the bottom left to create one using WMS.

Hitting this plus will present us with the question of whether the transfer we are about to create will be received at its destination by V5 WMS. So essentially we are being asked if we want to create a direct transfer or not.

In this case we will be recreating the first example we ran through above, with a WMS receiving at ‘MANUFACTURING 1’, so let’s hit ‘Yes’. We will now be asked to select a destination address and location.

Selecting our destination address and location will automatically begin the transfer, and we will be taken to the order lines screen where we can use the green plus in the bottom left to add commodities to this transfer order.

We will select flour, and scan another 500lb pallet onto this transfer.

Which will add this line to the transfer.

We can then dispatch the transfer by hitting the green check in the bottom right and confirming that we want to complete this stage of the transfer.

We can then go to our receiving WMS as we did above, and the receiving process will work in exactly the same way as it did there.

It is worth noting here that WMS created transfers will only work for palletized commodities/goods.

Above we have seen that Transfers can be manually picked from inventory by the operator. However, we can also make use of V5’s wave picking module to pick the required items for us.

Note that as with sales wave picking, the stock locations for or stock to be transferred needs to be correctly set up as a ‘rack’ location, including required dimension and location information. More info on this can be found here.

Let’s use an example to demonstrate this. In this scenario our production facility requires 1000lbs of flour to be transferred from our storage facility. In Control Center we would set this up in exactly the same way as we set a transfer up previously.

Heading to WMS, we can see how the picking process would be different if we use the transfer wave function. We would access this by hitting the ‘Ordering’ hex, followed by the ‘Transfer Wave’ hex.

Here we will see our scheduled transfer. As with wave picking for sales orders, we would need to check the ‘selected’ box for the order before hitting the green check mark to proceed.

We have an option here to manually input a trailer number that this transfer will be sent on, so let’s designate this as ‘TR001’. Once this is done we will be directed to pick our first pallet, which holds 500lb of flour. After scanning the required pallet, we will be directed to move this directly to the trailer, skipping over the steps that we might normally see when using the sales wave functionality.

We will then be directed to scan out 2^nd pallet, which also holds 500lbs of flour. Note that on this screen we are shown the running total of the amount already assigned to the transfer.

After which we will be asked to confirm that this pallet has also been moved to Trailer ‘TR001’. After this, since we have picked all the required stock for the transfer, we will be told that ‘All Orders are Fulfilled’ and that the ‘Transfer Wave (is) Ending’.

We will then be returned to the main transfers screen, and as we can see from the banner message above, the pallets are now automatically dispatched to the ‘IN_TRANSIT’ location.

We can then proceed to our receiving WMS and receive the transfer as we saw in the example above.

Two reports can be used to track transfers. These are the ‘Stock Transfer‘ and ‘Stock Transfer Received‘ reports. The former acts as the Bill of Lading for the transfer, and features a barcode that can be scanned at the destination location to, with the latter providing information on when the transfer was stocked in at its destination.