Tracking finished goods as they are moved into or around a storage facility in a high volume environment are challenging.

In many instances products are moved from a production line and into storage without being recorded properly. Sometimes product is staged in the midst of other product simply due to the lack of adequate time to handle the product or storage space. This mixture of products may cause similar lots to be separated or differing lots to be mixed together causing subsequent picking/shipping problems later in the operation. The lack of consistent recording of product as it is produced can also cause unnecessary requests for the creation of more products. Lack of this visibility also affects storage requirements.

As products arrive from an external source they are received against a Bill of Lading or ASN (if you are lucky). Products are then moved into the facility for storage. Many facilities do not track product by individual locations. The result is that product is simply placed wherever there happens to be room. This can cause product to be buried by new inbound product. The more product that is buried the more product is considered lost. Unnecessary requests for more product follows.

Affixing tags to pallets or containers of product before it is received into a facility provides a means to read those containers as they arrive. As containers are moved through various areas of the facility the tag may be read automatically to track where the containers have been moved. These reads can occur without any direct human interaction with the tag.

Capturing the product as it is moved into or around a facility without requiring direct human intervention with the tag (such as barcode requires) increases the visibility of what product is in the facility. This also provides confirmation of what product is within the facility.

The use of hand held readers can augment this by allowing the users to record tags that are in the storage areas for spot checking and QC purposes.

Because of the increased visibility provided by the use of this technology the need to run frequent physical inventories in these areas is reduce dramatically or eliminated.