Below are some definitions for the various terms, acronyms, and abbreviations that may be used when working with WMS applications in ViewPoint Logistics.

Note: For further details on WMS, see What is the Warehouse Management System?

Account Manager

Person responsible for a particular account/client. This is often referred to as the Control Desk. See also CR.04 [Account Managers].

Ancillary/Accessorial Charges

Invoices which contain various charges that would not be contained by a warehouse receipt or recurring charge.

Anniversary Date Billing

Where Storage Billing month is for a full calendar month; i.e., from the receipt date to the same day, less one day, in the month following. See also CR.14 [Storage Billing Schemas].

Bill of Lading Number

Number assigned by the system to each printed Document. It identifies and controls the paper Documents sent to the Warehouse. The Bill of Lading number is for the Carrier. See also Order Entry Introduction.

Bunch

Specifically identified grouping and quantity of one Product/Lot which is only on/in one Conveyance (Pallet, Tote, etc.). Since a Conveyance is only in one Location, it follows that a Bunch is always to be found in only one location. This is obvious but important.

Conveyance

Medium for the transport and storage and staging of goods; e.g., pallet, container, tote, trailer, rail car.

Goods representing more than one Product/Lot can be carried in/on one Conveyance. Each such sub- grouping of Product/Lot will be identified with a Bunch ID and a quantity. Most commonly, however, goods on/in a Conveyance belong to one Product/Lot only.

Only when goods are moving/in-transit to a final destination (such as a Retail site) is it usual to find many Bunches (each Bunch is a group of units of one Product/Lot) on a Conveyance. An example would be the case-picking of many Products onto a single Pallet by a picker, relocated to a staging area, then loaded onto a vehicle, and subsequently received at a final site.

Clearly then, the purpose of a Conveyance is to move goods from one Location to another. The Conveyance and goods may remain together for indefinite periods of time (as in storage), or briefly (as in the case-pick scenario).

Critical Amount

The minimum available quantity of Product to be maintained in the Warehouse. This quantity may be entered and analyzed by the system. See programs CR.62 [Client's Inventory Products] and IC.12 [Below Minimum Levels Report].

Cubic Size

Dimensional size of one Stockkeeping Unit within the system. The cubic size is calculated by the system after you enter the Product length, width, and height. See program CR.62 [Client's Inventory Products].

Customer

The Ship-To address for Orders. Clients may ship to a Customer address frequently enough to set up a permanent reference. See programs CR.26 [Customer (Ship-To) Addresses] and OE.01 [Enter Orders (Shipping)].

Generic Code

Generic codes are defined for grouping Classes of related Products; e.g., CORN may be the generic code, but there may be many varieties and grades of corn. See programs CR.32 [Generic Classification Codes] and CR.62 [Client's Inventory Products].

Goods

Goods are Material-of-Value, which is being processed, stored, or transported.

Identification

Special mark pertaining to a Receipt of Goods; e.g., a production number or batch number. See programs OR.20 [Lots - Maintain / Adjust],
RE.11 [In-Transit Receipts], RE.21 [Receipts], and RE.31 [Receipt Invoices].

Inbound/Outbound Ratio

Relationship between the initial Handling Charges for Inbound and Outbound activity.

Location

A Location is any identifiable place where goods and their Conveyances can be found. The ’identifiable place’ may be

• racked storage
• bulk storage
• an Aisle
• a Staging Area
• a remote facility
• a city
• any other place where goods may reside, however briefly.

Lot

Refers to a sub-group of one Product’s units, each unit of which shares the same set of variable attributes. These attributes are in addition to the attributes which defined the Product (factory of origin, production date, expiry date, brix, size, color, etc.).

Note: There is an element of arbitrariness in the assignment of a particular attribute (size, color, etc.) to the definition of a Product as opposed to the definition of a Lot. It entirely depends on the purposes of the Producer, the Seller, the Consumer, and any regulating Agency which may be involved.

Master Pack

Contains a specified number of Shipping Cartons. It is the number of Shipping Cartons that fit into one larger Container.

Measurement of Goods

There are many specific measurements (pounds, kilos, boxes, cartons, etc.). However, all are within these broad classifications:

Units- refers to discrete pieces (eg. 3 radios, 12 turkeys, etc.)

Weight- refers to the heaviness of one or many units.

Cube- refers to the cubic space used up by the existence of one or many units

Occurrences- refers to the number of times an event has happened (eg. number of moves, number of Bills of Lading printed, etc.).

Measuring Units

This is a Unit of Measure which would describe a Stockkeeping Unit or a Unit of Charge; e.g., CS for Case, TON for Ton, CWT for Hundredweight. See program CR.10 [Measuring Units].

Multi-Lot

Each Receipt of Goods will be received into a unique Lot. Therefore one Product may contain many Lots.

NMFC Codes

National Motor Freight Classification codes. This classification describes the Freight Class of a Product. NMFC codes are standard within the United States and Canada. See program CR.30 [National Motor Freight Classes].

Nominal Warehouse

This is the main Warehouse in which a Client has his Product stored.

Odd Tie

This is the term used if the top layer of a Pallet has fewer Cases than the underlying layers.

One-Time Client

One-time Clients do not have Receiving Storage Invoices. The Client will only see Handling Charges on the initial Storage Invoice, but the
Sales and General Ledger may be broken out by Handling and Storage. See program CR.18 [Client Arrangements].

Order Multiple

This is the Client's Ordering multiple. The Order multiple, along with the Pack size, is used to calculate the Stockkeeping Units to be Ordered. See programs CR.62 [Client's Inventory Products] and OE.01 [Enter Orders (Shipping)].

Order Number

This number is assigned by the system when the Order is entered. It is a permanent number identifying the original Order. See program OE.01 [Enter Orders (Shipping)].

Pack

Quantity of a Product/Lot in a shipping Carton.

Pack Name

Name of the Carton (eg. Box, Bundle, 4-Pack, etc.).

Pack Size

This is the number of sub-Units within a Stockkeeping Unit; e.g., if there are a dozen packages within a Case, Pack size would be 12. See program CR.62 [Client's Inventory Products].

Pallet Tie

Number of Cases or Units in one layer on the Pallet.

Pieces/Piece Goods

When every unit (piece, instance) within a Product/Lot is readily distinguishable from every other unit, then it is a piece goods Product. It may not be necessary to distinguish or identify every piece while they sit in inventory, but perhaps only upon shipping; e.g., variable weight Frozen Turkeys, Unit IDs.

Product

Sub-classifies goods according to a unique and invariable set of physical attributes that every unit of those goods will have; e.g., size, composition, shape, etc. Every unit of goods with the same attributes is another instance of the Product.

Quantity

In common usage it means the amount of the most important unit of measure that applies to a Product or Event. Most commonly this is the number of discrete units of a Product/Lot.

Sometimes there are no discrete units within a Product (as in a pile of metallurgical sand/ alloy), only Weight. In such a case, Units are treated as Weight (Unit count and Weight count are always equal, unit Weight is 1).

Relative Positioning

... of goods and Conveyances within a Location. It is necessary to know, in a multi-positional Slot or Bulk Area, where the goods are. In other words, very often we need to know the location within a Location. Why? Because to determine whether stock is readily pickable or is instead buried, you must know its position relative to other stock in the Location.

Release-By Date

This is an option within the program to release Lots by the oldest Pack expiry date rather than by your internal Lot number.

Recurring

This is the charging of Storage for subsequent Periods after the initial Storage. See program IP.31 [Recurring Storage - Generate].

Revenue Reporting Code

This is a Sales grouping code for gathering Sales statistics (Storage, Handling, etc.).

Schedule of Dates

Storage and Inventory Reporting Periods. These dates may be specified for a Client or can be general to the entire Company. See program CR.12 [Storage Periods/Billing Dates].

Single-Lotted Product

A Product for which Stock rotation is handled manually in the Warehouse; i.e., each receipt of goods is received into the same Lot. Other terms that may be used: Perm Lot or Summary Item. See program CR.62 [Client's Inventory Products].

Situation of Goods

Situation refers to the separate physical groupings of units of a Product, specifically

• Location where some or all of a Product/ Lot’s goods can be found.
• Conveyancing (eg. Pallets, Containers) associated with the group or groups of Product/ Lot’s goods which can be found in a Location.
• Relative Positioning of the Conveyance within the Location.
• Unique identification of each of the one or more groups (Bunches) of a Product/Lot’s goods associated with each Conveyance in a Location, and the quantity of goods in each identified Bunch.
• Packaging of the goods that sit on Conveyances in Locations. eg. 1 Master pack = 3 Cartons 1 Carton = 16 Units (Singles)

SKU

Abbreviation of Stockkeeping Unit. This is the Unit of Measure describing the lowest level of stocking the Product; e.g., CS for Case.

Stack

Number of Storage Units which can be placed one on top of the other. See program CR.62 [Client's Inventory Products].

Storage Schema

These are the Billing arrangements for initial and Recurring Storage Charges. See program CR.14 [Storage Billing Schemas].

Sub-Location

The ability to divide a Lot into more than one Location within the Warehouse.

Tier

Number of layers on a Pallet.

Unit IDs

Unit IDs are assigned to units that are otherwise indistinguishable. Unit ID Products are a specific example of piece goods. Often, but not always, Unit IDs must be individually tracked, in which case every unit within a Lot and Product must be separately identified in Inventory.

Wareho using Categories

The following categories of terms are used in WMS sub-system applications.