Introduction

When discussing planning in wholesale companies, the focus is often on inventory planning, also known as WMS (Warehouse Management System). Naturally, warehouse and inventory management are one of the most essential aspects for a wholesale company. However, besides managing inventory positions, there is much more involved in delivering products on time. Every step of the process must be planned, monitored, and analyzed. In this article, we will delve deeper into the benefits of vPlan for wholesale companies.

On-time Delivery

Wholesale companies often have one primary goal: delivering products on time. Products need to be in stock to be delivered on time, but processes surrounding this also need to be efficiently organized to ensure timely dispatch. While a product may be in the warehouse or purchased, there is always handling required to ultimately deliver it to the customer. This handling is often not planned, and this is where vPlan comes into play.

What is Handling?

Simply put, handling refers to all actions necessary to receive and deliver products. These are often quick, short logistic movements and actions. For each wholesale company, these activities can vary significantly, but they may include:

• Picking
• orders
• Assembling
• Customizing
• Labeling
• Packaging
• Loading

For these tasks, employees, machines, and spaces are required. By efficiently planning these tasks based on your available capacity, you ensure that products are delivered on time.

Planning Handling Tasks

Most wholesale companies use ERP or accounting software for creating sales and purchase orders. However, there are no capabilities for the work surrounding these orders in such systems. So what do we do? We bring these sales and purchase orders into vPlan. The order becomes a card on the online planning board. From now on, there are numerous possibilities.

It is also possible to create your own cards (orders) if you do not yet use ERP or accounting software.

Now that the order has become a digital card, paper picking lists and work orders can be thrown away! You can set up your handling process exactly as you want it. We'll show three examples.

📦 Order picking

The sales order automatically appears in your planning. Each line in the sales order becomes its own card. With statuses, you can quickly and easily indicate whether the product has been picked. Additionally, you can also capture extra information in custom fields of your choice. The orders are picked and ready to go to the assembly department.