Garbage In, Garbage Out GIGO Problem Statement
Any good sales pitch worth its weight in gold, especially when it comes to enterprise-wide software packaging deals, is going to claim that it can give your company a strategic competitive advantage by offering a tailored, turnkey solution that boosts your bottom line while simultaneously driving quality and value to your end-user.
Rarely, however, is this proposal followed up with just ‘how’ such a sweeping change might take hold when faced with actual dynamic operating conditions as seen in warehouses, distribution centers, and logistics hubs, writ large.
Enter SphereWMS.
This company’s warehouse management system (WMS) goes back to basics and, in so doing, endeavors to solve the industry-wide problem of how to prevent the introduction of quality defects within one’s value stream and to stop the garbage-in, garbage-out (GIGO) problem from negatively impacting your margins and customer-facing reputation.
The current state of quality assurance through inventory control
SphereWMS recognizes that the velocity in which products move through the supply-chain pipeline is only likely to increase as e-commerce becomes less the way of the future than standard consumer behavior.
The team understands that this means warehouses and manufacturers upstream from a core distribution hub are unlikely to perform adequate quality checks or sampling audits on each and every delivery that hits their inbound docks.
With the number of products now flowing through e-commerce as well as brick-and-mortar channels at an all-time high, however, hub-and-spoke operators no longer have the ability to simply switch distributors or manufacturers to stem the defect injection, or pollution, of their own facilities.
This GIGO problem, or when the quality of the output is determined by the quality of the input, means that this ‘last-touch’ provider often gets inaccurately accused of poor fulfillment practices and loses life-time customers in the process.
How SphereWMS stops GIGO in its tracks
All that said, SphereWMS offers simple, though lasting, solutions to this documentation issue in order to hold couriers, manufacturers, and third-party logistics personnel were accountable when such pollution occurs.
They are able to achieve this through network-wide integration of advance receipt notice (ARN) file uploads, cloud-based supplier advance ship notice (ASN) alerts, receipt of put-away or stow actions for financial and physical auditing purposes, and, lastly, immediate communication of such actions via email.
By creating this document trail, not only are ‘polluters’ held accountable, but, more importantly, those reliable shippers begin to earn more of your business and, in so doing, delight your end-user by ensuring that what is eventually picked and packed for shipment is the right item in the right quantity in the right size and correct color.
How SphereWMS guarantees surety and security
What’s more, as your team better understands the ‘in’ of the GIGO problem, they can stem the flow of products from that particular provider, which frees them to participate in more value-added activities and not simply conduct audits and correct defects that never should have been put-away in the first place.
Additionally, with such robust tracking measures in place, any security issues become immediately visible and, hopefully, free your loss prevention team from having to conduct costly external investigations.
Lastly, knowing shipping details in real-time means that your finance team can chase down late payments and drive your accounts receivable line item to zero!
Conclusion & call-to-action:
The GIGO problem is not new and certainly one that does not require a great deal of over-engineered, enterprise-based software; rather, the issue must be viewed, and resolved, from a logical and accountability-focused vantage point.
This is where SphereWMS is, truly, worth their weight in gold.
The team aims to solve the problem through simple, intuitive software applications that root out the cause of the quality, security, or surety issue from the start so that your team can focus on what really matters: boosting profit margins through reliable, accurate, and timely customer order fulfillment.
