The Importance of License Plating for the Warehouse Environment

License plating in the food supply chain refers to how inventory items are tracked throughout the warehouse environment. A license plate is a number assigned to each containment unit, which allows for better grouping and management of inventory. This, in turn, helps businesses in the food supply chain greatly improve operational efficiency by reducing the number of scans necessary to enter a transaction—allowing businesses to overcome many of the common food supply chain challenges.

In this post, we’ll talk about license plating in the warehouse, why it’s important, how it can help improve your food supply chain business and how the right food software can help you implement better, more efficient license plating into your business.

What is License Plating?

While you may have an image of those hard plates that don the front and back of every car, license plating can actually be used for warehouse management and efficiency as well. With license plating, only a barcode is needed to scan and identify all of the product information.

License plates are defined for different types of containers such as bins, totes or railcars, though the most common term used is a pallet. The pallet becomes its own license plate record with the information about the items inside which can be detected with one single barcode scan. As with vehicle license plates, a lot of different information can be associated with the common pallet license plate, such as:

• Item

• Quantity

• Serial number

• Manufacture date

• Expiration date

• Lot number

• Location

More inventory flows through warehouses now than ever before, so having a system in which items can be traced and processed quickly and easily is critically important to handle the large amounts of inventory. Read on to discover more about how license plating can greatly improve your business in the food supply chain.

How Can License Plating Help Your Business?

The purpose of license plating in the food supply chain is to keep track of inventory by grouping and managing all of the items and pallets via license plate numbers throughout the food supply chain.

License plate numbers distinguish each item for better lot management and traceability. If you use an even more advanced version of license plating through a warehouse management software system, you can further improve and track items in your warehouse. License plating lets you not only track groups of items by number, but it also can apply to the base distribution and the shop floor control. More specifically, license plating can help food supply chain businesses be more efficient in multiple ways, including:

• Receiving shipments faster by letting you enter license plate information ahead of time.

• Monitoring inventory items by license plate to detect any problems and proactively fix them.

• Identifying popular warehouse items to make sure routes for those items are fast and efficient.

• Tracking items in a pallet and ensuring everything is in the right place where it should be in the food supply chain process.

• Tracing containers, maximizing space in the warehouse and improving load accuracy.

• Creating better customer satisfaction in tandem with faster updates as a result of being able to scan license plate numbers quickly.

• Improving load management functionality.

• Speeding up overall warehouse operations by minimizing manual data entry and eliminating human error.

If you aren’t already implementing license plating into your business, it is well worth the investment. By using food ERP software, you can facilitate license plating and make your food supply chain business much more efficient. With our industry-specific food and beverage solution, Aptean Food & Beverage ERP, you can create new license plate records in multiple ways and define the items in each record.

Warehouse Management With Aptean Food & Beverage ERP License Plate Records

Aptean Food & Beverage ERP software provides a way to set up licensing within your business’ food supply chain. You can set up licenses to represent pallets, totes, bins or however you prefer to organize your inventory. Here are some of the most important features offered:

• Streamlined pallet movement – You can track different items in detail by variant, lot number, serial number and weight on a single license plate to make it easier to move items throughout your warehouse without the need for manual data entry.

• Tailored configuration – You can configure your license plating the way you want to reflect the specific way your business stacks and stores items, and configure items in a way that is most convenient for your vendors' and customers' preferences.

• Robust tools – The comprehensive management features accompanying Aptean Food & Beverage ERP software allow users to take advantage of many features including counting, building, transferring, merging and separating license plates with little fuss.

Now that you’ve learned more about license plating in the warehouse as it applies to the food supply chain, we’re here to answer any questions you have about implementing the right software for your business.

Contact us today to speak about the best possible ERP solutions for your business. We hope this article has helped highlight the importance of license plating and how it can make your food business better while building better trust with your customers and vendor partners.