Tracking Picking, Packing and Shipping with BellHawk

BellHawk provides comprehensive support for the picking, packing and shipping of finished goods.

The process starts with the receipt of the customer order and the entry of a contract or purchase order into the system, along with all the data about the customer order. This data may be entered directly into BellHawk or imported from an ERP system.

The customer order may be directly entered into BellHawk as a shipping order. Alternately a blanket purchase order or contract can be entered into the system and then shipping orders released against this contract/blanket order.

This shipping order references shipping order line items which specify the products and quantities to be shipped. These shipping order line items may reference contract line data.

If the BellHawk material planning option is being used then the shipping order line items may also be used to automatically generate purchase requisitions for material and work orders for jobs to make products.

The shipping order is used to generate barcoded picking sheets, which have a barcode for each line item to be picked or packed for the shipping order. A shipment order may be divided down into different packing slips for different material handlers.

When whole containers, such as pallets are picked for shipment, the material handler will scan the barcode for the line item and have the locations where these items are to be found displayed on their mobile computer screen, in oldest age first order. The material handler can then scan the tracking barcode on the container being picked followed by a location barcode for the staging area where the materials are being placed ready for loading.

The same picking sheet is used to record the packing of items to a container, such as a pallet or a shipping carton. As each item is packed, it is recorded as being packed into that container. Packing can be recorded using mobile computers or on a bench using PCs equipped with corded or cordless scanners. As each container is packed, a packing list can be generated for the container.

As items are being picked or packed against an order line item, the materials being picked are checked and the operator warned:

If the wrong material is being picked or packed
If the material has not passed QC inspection (if the BellHawk QC tracking option is being used).
If the quantity exceeds the quantity on the picking order.

Once the containers have been picked or packed then shipping labels can be generated, which typically have customer specified formats, including tracking barcodes to be included. This includes support for Military Standard Shipping labels, ISO 15418 2D barcodes and UCC128 tracking barcodes. It also includes support for encoding RFID tags for both DoD and commercial customers such as WalMart.

Shipments can be setup ahead of time with the recording of:

Shipper
Expected time and date of pickup
Expected pickup duration
Shipment orders to be included in shipment.

When the truck arrives, it is assigned to a dock. Then containers being loaded onto the truck can be recorded as being loaded onto the truck by:

Scanning a pick sheet followed by the dock barcode to record that everything picked to a staging area has been loaded onto the truck at that dock.
Scanning the tracking barcode on each pallet or carton and the barcode by the dock door as each container is loaded.
Automatically reading the RFID tag on each container using a dock-door portal to record the loading of the container.

The status of loading each of the orders can be seen in real-time as the truck is loaded. In this way missing containers from the shipment can be recorded. Also, if the containers are being scanned as they are being loaded on the truck, the material handler is warned if they attempt to load a container on the wrong truck. If the weight of each container is known (usually needs some customization) then the system will track the gross weight loaded onto the truck.

When the shipping dock is closed, then the system will produce a Bill of Lading recording what was actually loaded on to the truck. It can also produce electronic manifests for Emailing to customers. The system can export Advanced Shipment Notice (ASN) data in EDI846 format for import by an EDI package and sending to a customer. If the BellHawk DoD option is being used then data can be exported in WAWF submission format.

BellHawk can also handle shipments by carriers such as UPS and FEDEX. In this case BellHawk can be integrated with packages such as Connect-Ship to automatically generate carrier tracking labels. Shipments in this case do not require the creation of a formal shipment. Packages are simply scanned as they are picked up but a shipment record is still created so that ASNs and WAWF submission files can automatically be created.

An important benefit of the BellHawk is that it can mix a wide variety of shipping modalities from shipping spare parts by UPS to having daily shipment releases to a major customer. In each case it is only necessary to specify the data items appropriate to the customer order. This enables BellHawk to handle a mixed stream of Military and Commercial, large customer and small customer, domestic and overseas shipments with a minimum of data entry and mistakes.