The quality of products in your warehouse can diverge on product level. While one pallet in a batch may be in a perfect state, another could be assessed differently based on the expiration date, for example. It might seem logical, but how do you keep track of all the different qualities in your inventory? Whether it concerns food supplies with a short expiration date or damaged products? The functionality of customer quality could be your answer.

What is customer quality?

Using the functionality of customer quality, you can distinguish goods based on quality or per pallet within a batch. By linking these quality characteristics to your WMS, you can check the quality of goods in every phase of the logistic process. The results of the quality check are connected to the respective goods, products, or batches. As an example, customer quality enables you to label foods on a specific pallet differently when these specific pallets aren’t qualified for human consumption but are still suitable for animal consumption. Furthermore, it is possible to distinguish qualities when a part of the lot is slightly damaged. Another distinction can be made when you wish to label ‘returns’ differently than other pallets in the lot. In this case, you use the quality characteristic ‘returns’ because these goods, for example, have a different value. Enabling you to see the overall state and value of your stored goods at a glance.

How does customer quality work?

Define quality when receiving goods

First, you can define the quality of products when they are entering your warehouse. A short inspection before you store the goods results in the possibility to easily distinguish a specific lot and its quality later in the logistic process. The quality characteristic given to the goods is taken into consideration when allocating these goods.

Adjusting quality characteristics in your warehouse

Second, it is possible to adjust the quality of the labeled goods while these are stored in your warehouse. Your customer can do this himself by using an ‘RCV-STOCKDATACHNGE’ message. Besides your customer, when appropriately designing the scanning process, you can easily adjust the quality of a pallet from your warehouse. Then, an automated message containing the new quality is sent to your customer as an ‘SND-STOCK-ADJUSTMENT’ message.

Customer quality in practice

When using the functionality customer quality, your customers can order specific lots or pallets based on the given quality characteristic. In the allocation of goods, these characteristics are taken into consideration. When an action is needed for goods with a specific quality, the goods with a different quality aren’t allocated. What characteristics or labels you use can be determined per customer.

How to implement customer quality?

Are you ready to explore the benefits of the functionality of customer quality? We’ve created a step-by-step guide with which you can easily make quality characteristics yourself.

1. Create a new characteristic

2. Link the characteristic to a free characteristic in the document line.
The characteristic needs to be included in the posts. You can create a status template for a specific quality. Optionally, you can create a template per customer.

3. Link the status template to the customer through ‘customer status attributes’.

4. After implementation, you have to provide the current inventory of the characteristics through the inventory list.

5. To conclude, the EDI messages need to be expanded.
A message (RCV-RECEIPT) should be included in the order when goods are received. When goods are transported out of the warehouse, an (RCV-SHIPMENT) message should be included. Optionally RCV-STOCKDATACHNG and SND-STOCKDATACHNGE can be included. Using these messages, it is possible for your customer to change quality characteristics and for you to send an update to the customer about the change in quality characteristics.

These messages are delivered ‘as is’ without any guarantees or rights.

Do you need help with implementing the functionality of customer quality in your WMS?
Contact our team via support@elevate-it.be.