Warehouse and Locator Scan Footprint Alternative

Warehouse and Locator Scan Footprint Alternative

The purpose of this section is to give you an alternative method for tracking inventory locations in a warehouse where product moves from 'location to location' quickly.

Footprint Summary and Implementation

Use the concept of 'scanned footprint' to determine the current and previous locations of a particular product. Each new scan represents the current location. The previous scan represents the previous location (or the from location). Here are the implementation details:

• Give the product a barcode license plate (example 2x3 label)
• Give physical locations barcode license plates (example 2x3 label)
• When a person brings a specific product to a specific location, he/she scans the product to the location.
• Behind the scenes, the scan goes into a newly created link table (name: chuboe_product_location_scan_lnk) that connects desired product to the desire location at a given time by a given person.
• The chuboe_product_location_scan_lnk has an event that udpates a 'Last Location' field on either the LotNumber(asi) or the Product.
• Users can reference the LotNumber(asi) or the Product to find the 'Last Location' at any given time to quickly determine its location. A subtab quick shows its history of scans/footprints.

Notes About the Solution

• The term 'location to location' could refer to workstations, shelves, people, etc…. A scan can represent anything or anywhere the production exists or passes by.
• You will still use the existing iDempiere Warehouse and Locator infrastructure.
• This solution assumes you are moving inside an existing iDempiere Warehouse.
• You can create a Locator named 'Scanned' or 'Default' if you wish.
• There are times when a single scan should include more than one piece of information. You can use a special character to delineate the values. Example: Product::Qty. This concept adds a little complexity in the form of coding BeforeSave logic when saving the scan; however, the enhanced user experience is often worth it.

Why are Footprints Important

Moving product/lots using iDempiere's Inventory Move window requires quite a bit of overhead both in terms of human effort and iDempiere code. There are times when you do not need the overhead of the Inventory Move. Instead, you simply wish to perform a simple scan inside a single warehouse (simple human movement) to track movements.

Example Scenarios

• Product Inspection: There are times when an inspection involves moving product to multiple workstations. Each workstation move would be a scan. The destination workstation would be shown in the latest scan. The previous scan shows the previous location.
• Manufacturing: There are times when the manufacturing route requires you to move products. This scan architecture allows for easy tracking of product movement within the route.
• Shipping Pick: There are times when the pick process requires moving a product multiple times:
  • Move to a cart
  • Move to table
  • Move to consolidation shelf
  • Move to pack table
  • Even... move to tracking number...