Renewed Focus On Quality
In life and business, there are many things within our control and just as many things outside of our control. As a 3PL warehouse, the increasing volume of imports is largely out of our control. With the Ever Given container ship fiasco and the port congestion on the US West coast where ships are anchored outside of busy ports, it’s very difficult to predict the volume of products and where those delays may impact the supply chain. What we can control, however, is the quality of service we provide when products actually arrive at your warehouse.
Having a thorough inbound, inspection, and putaway process is vital to ensuring accuracy of receiving product and inspection to ensure quality of the product meets the rigorous standards your clients hold themselves to. Whether that is inspecting the trailer/container, each pallet, or even individual parts that are received, each step of the inbound process is vital to ensure the product meets acceptable conditions for storage and shipping.
Within our MobileLink™ mobile scanning application, one of the newest features recently released is an inbound Questionnaire that can be catered to your inbound operations. Once configured users simply follow a series of questions, such as:
– Did you chock the tires?
– Is there visible damage to the trailer?
– Is there visible damage to the product?
– How many pallets did you restack?
Most of these answers can simply be information to the warehouse operator and customer service reps. However, we can also tie in custom billing rules based on the answers to these questions and tie those into Value-Added Service Charges. To differentiate yourself from your competition you must focus on the small details that will set you apart.
Challenge: Review your inbound process through the lens of Quality.
– Are you getting consistent results from your staff?
– Are you capturing all of your Value-Added Service Charges?
– What else can you do to improve your inbound service quality?
We would love to hear your success stories about inbound quality control and would love to feature your stories in our upcoming newsletters!