Despatch Department

Primary Functions

1. Prepare and Assemble Despatch Requirements.
   1. 1. Prioritise Workload
      2. Pick items as required.
      3. Pack and assemble deliveries.
      4. Capture picking / packing costs.
      5. Generate delivery packing content information (labels, delivery notes)
         

2. Where necessary, validate client credit position before despatch

3. Process despatch of consignments
   1. 1. Arrange courier/shipment service; capture courier tracking info
      2. Validate / Record despatch costs
      3. Capture courier collection information
      4. Provide confirmation of despatch

Inputs

Outputs

Current Processing Flow

Prepare Despatch Requirements

1. Within the despatch requirements for a given day, the despatch manager prioritises the relative order of when despatches will be prepared and made ready by assigning a priority number.
2. Priorities are determined based on, but not limited to a series of additional information,
   • Despatch Destination (e.g. differing country destinations require different time cut off deadlines)
   • Required Date & Time.
   • Availability of items for despatch.
   • Courier capacity / availability.
3. Despatch staff select the highest priority despatch record to process
4. Before attempting to pick the items on the despatch, staff first check the record to see wether there are additional delivery note instructions that require attention
5. If the record has additional delivery instructions a flag will indicate this, together whether the specific instructions
6. Should a record have this staff will deal with the specific delivery instructions and update the record to indicate this
7. Next, once the required stock items are available to meet the despatch requirement (the availability is indicated on the record) they are picked, placed in a picked location and the record updated to reflect this.

Assemble Despatch Requirements

1. Despatch staff then assemble the delivery - that is packing the picked items into  boxes / containers to make up the despatch consignment..
2. Despatch staff record which items are packed into each box, and produce two print outs.
   • Packing/ Note(s) which record the items in the delivery; delivery address and qty of boxes that make up the delivery.
   • Box end labels - [delivery identifier; delivery description; contents of the box  - SKU and QTY; the sequence number for the box - X of Y ].
3. Box end labels are attached to the corresponding physical boxes, whilst packing notes are attached to the whole consignment.
4. As part of the assembly process, staff record any picking and packing costs as well as the courier charges that will be charged to the client for the despatch

Where necessary, validate client credit position before despatch

1. Where customers have exceeded their credit terms, or where no terms exist, additional steps are required before the despatch can leave TOT.
2. In this instances, despatch staff check with various internal departments (accounts, production administration, senior management) to establish whether the goods can be despatched or must remain on hold until additional payments received.
3. Where credit approval is required and given, the record is updated to indicate this validation has been performed.

Process despatch of consignments

1. The Despatch consignment is provided to the courier / collecting party
2. As part of the process, a signature is obtained from the courier together with timestamp for audit purposes
3. The record is updated to reflect send status

The workflow can be represented schematically