Distribution Management

The ultimate test of a company’s performance lies in its ability to deliver product as promised. STEELMAN Shipping Management provides the tools to easily build, schedule and dispatch loads to ensure that each order is filled and shipped on time. All of the necessary paperwork is prepared to accompany the order, including customizable invoices, bills of lading and product documentation.

Features

• Track physical location of all inventory items using hand held scanner. Location updates are easily entered.
• Maintain full history of all inventory transactions.
• Maintain full traceability of an item’s identity, all the way back to the supplier’s heat and serial numbers.
• Monitor on-hand and on-order positions using user defined inventory control groups.
• Support provided for managing third party inventories.
• Support provided for year end inventory reconciliation, as well as cycle counts using the hand-held scanner.
• Stock is visible across the entire corporation, as well at the individual warehouse level.
• Track the current value of the inventory, using standard, last, replacement or actual cost.
• Store original heat chemistry and test results on all stock items.
• Query orders ready to ship.
• Create and dispatch loads, with multiple destinations and orders in a single load.
• Generate customized shipping tags for selected customers.
• Validate that items put on the truck belong on that load using hand-held scanners.
• Automatically generate all bills of lading, invoices and custom’s documents when the load is shipped.
• Calculate freight charges based on destination, drop charges and dead freight charges.
• Support is provided for drop-shipments, cross-docking and other third party activities.
• Stock is automatically relieved when orders are shipped.
• Orders are automatically closed when target weight has been met.
• Reporting capabilities to analyze shipments and correlate them to sales using advanced Business Intelligence tools.

Paper or Paperless Warehouse Management

The RF Warehouse Management will provide the user with access to selected STEELMAN functions via an Intermec Java enabled handheld device. The handheld is equipped with a bar-code scanner, and will be compatible with industry standard 802.11b wireless networking.

• Provides backward/forward inventory traceability functions.
• Provides a function for periodic inventory physical count.
• Allows for either a full inventory reconciliation, or will allow a particular area (row, column, or warehouse for example) to be reconciled on its own.
• View the details of any particular inventory tag by either scanning the tag’s bar code, or entering the tag number on the handheld’s keyboard.
• Authorized users can change the item’s detail via handheld.
• View order summary.
• View a summary of any particular order/inquiry/offering by entering the order id number on the handheld’s keypad.
• View the list of items reserved against any order.
• Access the shipping order from any sales order.
• View the details of any particular production order by entering the number on the handheld’s keypad.
• Remove tags from a production order, or add them by either scanning the bar code or entering it on the keypad.
• View the production lineup for a given work center.
• Manipulate the sequence of production orders in the lineup, add production orders, or remove them.
• View the current schedule of shipping loads that have been assembled.
• Drill down to view the orders attached to the loads, and the inventory items reserved.
• Edit the shipping schedule or loads from the handheld.
• Select a load from the shipping schedule and scan or enter inventory tags to confirm that they have been loaded for shipment.
• Verifies that the tag belongs to the load in progress.
• Warn if some of the material specified on the shipping order was not loaded.
• Enter an inventory item tag number, to find its location.
• Query the inventory items in a particular location.
• Receive inventory.
• Record production.
• Search stock.
• Inventory count.
• Count and reconcile inventory either by location (cycle counts) or by warehouse.

Receiving

• The system allows for the entry of inventory receipts of the following types:
  

  • Purchase Order Receiving,
  • Customer-Owned Material,
  • Customer Return,
  • Miscellaneous.

• When receiving against a purchase order, the user can recall the
  
  data from the purchase order by referencing either the line item
  
  number, or the mill serial number (if available on the purchase order).
• The receiving of customer-owned items validated against the bill of lading submitted by the customer.
• The receiving of steel items returned by customer validated against a customer’s claim.
• Supports the automatic generation of tag numbers.
• Supports the processing of advance shipping notices (ASN).
• Provides the ability to record chemistries against a mill heat number.
• Allows any number of digital photographs to be attached to an inventory item once it has been received.
• Provides a function to enter vendor invoices for steel items.

Shipping and Invoicing

The shipping application provides all the functions that are required for setting up and scheduling shipments, producing shipping documentation, and for the closing of sales orders. Allows the user to:

• Create a lookup table for FOB points.
• Create and maintain a look up table for shipping methods.
• Define carrier routes.
• Create and maintain freight rates for carriers.
• Attach shipping instructions to a shipping order.
• Provide a list of the all items that are ready to be shipped.
• Select the carrier and method of shipment for a load.
• Schedule the load for shipment by assigning a shipping date to the load.
• Query scheduled loads that have been built for a given destination.
• Transfer loads to move inventory from one location to another.
• Automatically generate the shipping documents.
• Review and edit the automatically generated shipping documents.
• Attach an external document (such as Word or text document) to the bill of lading.
• Upon confirmation of shipment, all inventory items that have been shipped will be removed from the live inventory table and archived into a historical inventory table.

Customs and Duties

• The system calculates the duty and brokerage fees payable on any invoice based on pre-defined tables.
• Brokerage fees are stored in each Broker’s business partner profile with an effective date.
• Duties are calculated by first looking up the tariff number and duty rate (%) from a user defined table.
• A Duty Calculation Report can be generated for any given invoice to examine the calculated duties.