The Product Zone Maintenance functionality of The Business Edge was designed to assist with warehouse organization by categorizing product codes into zones based on frequency of movement. Product zones are determined for each product code based on custom throughput parameters and are then used to move items to a corresponding warehouse location. The product zone value can be displayed within Wireless Warehouse, Product Inquiry and other functions and can be used to guide stock put away within the designated zones. Significant efficiency improvements can be achieved by coordinating the zones for the most frequently moved product codes with the most easily accessed inventory locations and by moving low usage products to the harder to access areas in your facility.
Product Zones are set up by Branch and are based on minimum pulls per product during the specified Months of Usage History and Months of No Usage for Low Zone Usage time periods. After the desired number of zones are created, a Product Zone Maintenance - Summary report is generated which includes key inventory statistics regarding the number of license plates, packages, products and total quantities in each zone. The report displays both original and new values for each parameter. The original values are based on the active product zone value for each product code (Expense and Non-Stock items are not included in the summary), and the new values are calculated using the parameters entered for each zone in Enter & Edit Zone Logic. Once the desired distribution of license plates, packages, etc. is achieved in each zone, the product zones can be updated simply by indicating 'Yes' when exiting the summary report screen.
1. PRODUCT ZONE MAINTENANCE is located at:
Warehouse Management
Warehouse Planning
Product Zone Maintenance
If you have Branches, you will first select the Branch you wish to analyze, then press Escape or click OK to proceed:
2. ENTER & EDIT ZONE LOGIC - Specify the Months of Usage History and Months of No Usage for Low Zone Usage time periods and select the zone for No Usage products. Press Escape or click OK to proceed after entering all three fields.
Number of Usage history – This is the period of time to review for usage/pulls, in this example 12 months
Months of No Usage for Low Zone – In this example anything not sold in the last 24 months will be assigned to the No Usage Low Zone. In this example, Zone 6 is indicated on the last line as the No Usage Low Zone.
3. ENTER & EDIT ZONE LOGIC - DETAIL - Individual zones are created using minimum number of pulls (Min Pulls) target values. Zone 1 should always be set for the most active product codes, Zone 2 for the second most active products codes and so on.
Note: Min Pulls values should decrease as the Zone #'s increase and vice versa.
Press Enter or click on New Line to enter additional zones or double-click on existing zones to edit the Minimum Number of Pulls and Assign to Zone values. When zone logic has been entered press Escape or click OK.
In the example depicted above, zones will be calculated as follows:
Zone 1 - Product codes that have 24 or more pulls in the last 12 months
Zone 2 - Product codes that have 12 - 23 pulls in the last 12 months
Zone 3 - Product codes that have 0 - 11 pulls in the last 12 months
Zone 5 - Not Shown but will be automatically created for product codes that have pulls in the previous 13-24 months, but 0 in the last 12 months (This zone will be assigned as the No Usage Low Zone # -1, in this example Low Zone 6-1=Zone 5). This scenario only occurs when the Months of No Usage for Low Zone value is greater than the Months of Usage History.
Zone 6 - Product codes that have not been pulled in last 24 months
4. PRODUCT ZONE MAINTENANCE - Select 'Yes' to create PRODUCT ZONE MAINTENANCE - SUMMARY report using the entered new zone parameters. Selecting 'NO' will leave the new zone parameters set but will not run the report.
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5. PRODUCT ZONE MAINTENANCE SUMMARY - Calculations for 'Orig' and 'New' values will be reported for each zone.
Clicking on Product Detail Button - Will switch to a detailed breakdown of the calculations with values listed for each product code.
Clicking on Change Parameters Button - Will bring up the ENTER & EDIT ZONE LOGIC and ENTER & EDIT ZONE LOGIC and will allow values set up in Steps 2 & 3 above, to be changed without restarting. When Escape is pressed or OK is clicked the report will automatically recalculate. This feature can be used to tweak the zone parameters until the desired distribution of license plates, packages or # of products is achieved in each zone
6. UPDATE PRODUCT ZONES - If the desired distribution of product codes has been achieved for each zone, Clicking 'Yes' will update all product code master files to reflect the new zone. Clicking 'No' will exit Product Zone Maintenance but leave changes to the zone parameters intact without updating the product code master files.
