“Eating our own dog food”. Such a gross saying, but so appropriate. A less gross saying is “the Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes”. We used to live that saying, “Not Eating Our Own Dog Food” which is what we are doing now. Our warehouse used to contain far fewer items, and our transaction counts were much lower. So we could get away without using the technology that we sell, because we had not yet reached the tipping point where we really needed it.
If you are only doing 10 or 20 transactions in your warehouse a day, and you only have 50 or so pallets of goods, you can do things manually. But when you get bigger than that, mistakes get made too often, and products get lost. We were approaching that problem so we decided to start taking some of our own medicine (hah, got another one in!).
Our medicine is a doozy. An NB series lithium mobile power cart from NewCastle Systems, a PC, monitor, two Zebra label printers, one pack slip printer, a scale, and a Zebra Bluetooth barcode scanner. All running a full instance of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, BarTender’s Business Central Print Connector, and Dynamic Ship from Insight Works. Now that is some serious Dog Food!
The process is fantastic. When items are received into Dynamics, a label is printed through BarTender that has the part number and the date received. This label is adhered to the product pallet and then scanned every time a case is picked. This ensures 100% accuracy in the picking process. When shipping, the order is processed, box weighed, shipping label and pack slip printed, all on the one cart that is taken to the product. All one-piece flow to minimize errors and improve efficiency.
For repairs and project pieces, a smaller label is also automatically printed from Dynamics, that shows the customer, date received, and RMA or Project number. All from one mobile power cart, one ERP software package, and all automatically printed when doing the transaction.
We are no longer the cobbler’s children, we are taking our own medicine, and eating our own dog food. Which is also making us more accurate, and more efficient. We can help you do the same.