Optimization of Goods Incoming Process

Abstract: Increasing interest to optimization of goods incoming process has paralleled the rise of product diversity and advanced warehouse management based on logistics support systems. Nowadays, companies are universally faced with the requirements to reengineer their business processes starting with goods incoming operation, aiming to significantly reduce total operating costs and quickly respond to ultimate consumer. Previous academic research has provided many alternatives to attain the expected results. Nevertheless, an enormous gap still exists between theoretical research and practical operations. The purpose of this paper is to bridge this gap from operation level.We introduced a theoretical framework which was organized around earlier studies, latest findings and established literatures associated with overview of goods incoming process, flows management, seven wastes, logistics support systems etc. Meanwhile, an online fashion retailer, Nelly.com goods incoming process has been mapped from goods receiving, packing and sorting, warehousing to data input. As a result, intermittent material flows and information flows has been realized. Later on, a sensitivity analysis was performed to observe all wastes in the process through precise timing of each detailed activity. As the weaknesses and opportunities have been identified within Nelly’s goods incoming process, some heuristic solutions were proposed in the paper.Generally, flows should be smoothed and accelerated, particularly material flows and information flows related with goods incoming process. The interruption and miscommunication should be avoided to streamline the whole operation. Whilst, we inferred that all wastes within every sub-process have to be aware of. Consequently, some techniques such as scheduled delivery, cross-docking, goods classification, improved logistics support systems were proposed to eliminate wastes. Further on, the prevailed business process reengineering should be conducted as the next step to reallocate some resources or operations.Lastly, we simulated an expected goods incoming process based on Nelly’s status quo and heuristic suggestions. And some future research issues have been presented at the end to extend the vision to relevant domains.