Shelf Life Management

It’s pretty well known that food retailers have limits on how close to an expiration date they can accept products to be sold. As a supply chain partner, it’s our job to enforce these rules to ensure food safety throughout the supply chain. 3PLs manage many goods with short shelf lives and they must ensure they are rotating stock in proper FEFO order (first expiry, first out) while also avoiding shipping products that are nearing their expiration date, or have already expired.

Within Excalibur, there are 2 different sets of rules:

1. The first set of rules simply skips Lot #s where the code date has not yet expired, yet it’s within a designated timeframe that a specific consignee will not accept a delivery for that date code. Other consignees with different rules may still accept deliveries of that particular date code, so the product is still readily available for shipping purposes.
2. The secondary set of rules allows items to be configured with specific date rules tied to date codes which enable the WMS to automatically flag specific those Lot #s with a designated inventory status. By changing their status, this product will be skipped from all future shipment allocations.

While not fundamentally ground breaking, these are just a few of the many ways that Excalibur helps Food Grade 3PLs, Cold Storage 3PLs and many other operations who work with date sensitive inventory avoid shipping products that pose a risk to the health and safety of the general public. If you are interested in learning more about how Camelot 3PL Software can help with Date Sensitive inventory, please contact us today!