Item Number 'Suffixes'

Post date: Aug 08, 2011 1:26:56 PM

Currently, when you print item labels, in addition to the quantity of labels, you can identify the number of 'pieces' for an item.  When the label is printed, a sequential suffix is printed after the item number (it's also incorporated in the bar code) ranging up to the number of 'pieces'.  So for example, if you print one label for item number ABC555, and you request 4 'pieces', you'll get one label with item number 'ABC555-1', one with 'ABC555-2', one with 'ABC555-3', and finally one with 'ABC555-4'.  Each of these labels should then go on each of the different 'pieces' that make up that one item in your warehouse.

The goal of counting inventory with SMCP labels is to make it as fast as possible and as simple as possible.  Ideally, when counting inventory, a person can move quickly through a warehouse, scanning every label, not having to decide (or know) what items to scan, which are just part of another item, etc.  The slowest part of the inventory count is stopping to figure out what goes with what, or trying to deal with different 'kinds' of items differently.  Ideally, everything gets a label and everything just gets systematically scanned, and the 'figuring out' happens in the computer afterwards, not during the count.

The purpose of the suffix is to allow everything to be scanned methodically, but to be able to determine from the suffixes scanned how many of each ENTIRE item is on hand.  For example, if item number 3918X7 is an entire door, it may have 5 or so separate 'pieces': each door has a bundle of sections, a bundle of track, a hardware box, etc. EACH ONE of those 'pieces' will get an item label with the item number, but each piece will get a label with a different suffix.  It is NOT critical that any piece get any particular suffix: the sections can get suffix 3, the hardware box can get suffix 1, etc. - and this can be different for every item.  The only important thing is that: 

1) each piece gets a label, and that

2)  the range of the suffixes (or the 'number of pieces') matches the number of pieces that make up that door.

(If you choose, by convention, to use certain suffixes for certain pieces, for example to use suffix '1' for the sections, '2' for the track and so on, keep in mind that the system is unaware of these designations.)

Although the suffix DOES currently print on the labels, and it IS included in the bar code printed, it doesn't affect any of the processing in the system at the current time.  When items are scanned and then imported into inventory physical counts, the suffixes are ignored by the import function.  This is because the suffix feature is NOT CURRENTLY IMPLEMENTED in the system at this time (8/8/2011).  It is experimental, but we thought it made sense to get it on the labels now, even if we weren't ready to use it, so that labels wouldn't have to be reprinted if and when we made actual use of the suffixes.

Our plan is to use the suffixes in this way in the future:  When a physical count is imported into inventory, the system should be able to discard all the extra 'pieces' for each item and know that they are all just one item.  For example, if the count includes (2) ABC555-1's and (2) ABC555-2's, etc., the system will just record a quantity of 2 for the ABC555 item, regardless of how many 'suffix' labels were counted.  Additionally, we are hoping that we might be able to approximatel how many items are 'incomplete' - i.e, how many should have 5 pieces, but only have 4, or less.  But it's important to remember that none of this is currently working, and it may change in the future.