Full Podcast Episode
Turnkey 365 Podcast - LIGHTNING FAST Picking For Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
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A Podcast for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Users
Labor Shortages are still a problem in warehouses. In order to survive, organizations and workers need to stop wasting precious time with inefficient movement and unnecessary tasks. The Warehouse Insight Mobile app for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps you bypass the non-value-added work with true mobility.
See Below for the full transcription of this episode!
Chuck Coxhead (00:00:00):
Hey everybody. This is Chuck for the Turnkey 365 Podcast. This episode is near and dear to my heart. After decades in manufacturing and warehousing and distribution and working with ERP, I have Mark Hamblin from Insight Works with me today, and we are going to learn about the apps that they provide for Business Central Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central that are here to help the people that are near and dear to my heart, and that is the manufacturing warehouse and distribution folks. Mark, welcome. So, so glad to have you.
Mark Hamblin (00:00:33):
Thanks very much, Chuck. Happy to be here. Looking forward to it.
Chuck Coxhead (00:00:36):
Well, we'll see. I appreciate your optimism. So let's get into it. So Insight works, insight works, insight works. Who does Insight works help?
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Mark Hamblin (00:00:54):
Well, we help anybody that's really in that manufacturing and distribution area, and moving a little bit into the retail side as well. Anybody that's on Business Central that's dealing with inventory, that's probably the easiest way to put it. We can help them with, not so much from the inventory planning and things, but anything to do with the operations and the execution related to inventory. So that means manufacturing inventory, it means purchasing, it means warehouse management, selling inventory at a parts counter, those types of things. That's what we do. That's what we help with.
Chuck Coxhead (00:01:33):
So anyone who handles parts and anybody who was, I would say a first or second line supervisor for those people is what it sounds like. Makes sense to me.
Mark Hamblin (00:01:41):
Exactly. Yeah. From a role perspective within an organization, I mean it's the warehouse workers, it's the shop floor, assembly line or job shop type in manufacturing employees for the time collection, those sorts of things. It's the purchasers, it's the managers that are in there having to manage inventory levels, manage inventory counts, those sorts of things. That's who we're looking after.
Chuck Coxhead (00:02:08):
Well, that seems to be where the money is nowadays with all the conversation about labor shortage. And despite the conversations in the media and some of the data that we see, which doesn't look as bad as it could for sure, that labor shortage still seems to be the way whether be in distribution and warehousing, but they still have a very high attrition rate or manufacturing where they may be struggling to get some new blood up onto the shop floors. I mean, that's really where the money is in the US economy, global economy now, but it's the US economy for sure. So I love your focus there and again here and dear to my heart. So it's fantastic.
Mark Hamblin (00:02:47):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, sorry to interrupt. Yeah,
Chuck Coxhead (00:02:50):
Go.
Mark Hamblin (00:02:51):
Exactly. We're there to help systemize people's processes, right? So by that I mean instead of leaving that tribal knowledge in people's heads, because you've got turnover, you've got temporary workers, things like that, we're moving that into the business system so that we've got a system we can rely on versus specific individual that's been there 20 years that knows Part A is always put over there and nobody else knows that if he's on vacation or retires or something like that.
Chuck Coxhead (00:03:20):
Well, systems thinking is where it's at. And for all you people out there that are paying attention, listen up and listen closely. This systems thinking solves the attrition problem I have experienced numerous times, whether it be company for whom I worked or customers where someone leaves and now they are stuck. I know of one particular story where someone left, they had the knowledge in their head, they paid them big, big buku bucks to come back as a consultant. They didn't learn from their experience and sadly, that person was ill and passed away. So they made the same mistake twice and that cost companies big, big bucks. So I love when you talk about systematizing it, getting into the system, it helps speeds onboarding, it helps with attrition, and you derive other benefits of commonality or common process, if you will, instead of people winging it. So that's amazing stuff. So what compelled you to get into this and start siteworks?
Mark Hamblin (00:04:24):
Well, that's an interesting question. Well, for me anyway, but we started this in about 2008, 2009 actually as a var, an implementation practice implementing back then N AAV and subsequently Business Central. But as we're getting into it, we realized there's a lot of gaps within Business Central and nav. I mean great products, but they're not the best of breed for manufacturing and distribution. So as we're understanding where the productivity gaps are when using the standard product, we started building out solutions to fill those gaps, improve productivity, all those sorts of things. And as that evolved, we grew more into the I S V that we're now just solving those problems with our applications, our solutions, versus actually implementing Business Central and N A V. So we work through our resellers such as Self to go out and implement the broad solution, and we come in and fix those specific areas that call it the golden toothpick. They're almost a thin sliver of functionality, but they're really, really important to be able to get the most value out of your investment in the e p system.
Chuck Coxhead (00:05:39):
Well, and if you're starting a business defining that very narrow slice, that very micro niche as I like to call it, it's a perfect way to make sure that you're working and always improving as a subject matter expert as opposed to trying to be all things to all people. I'd rather be an inch wide and a mile deep personally if I'm running a business than a mile wide any day of the week. So I love your focus on these very narrow areas and as it turns out, boy, especially in warehousing and distribution, it's really lit up, hasn't it? It's been quite a ride over the past bunch of years.
Mark Hamblin (00:06:16):
Indeed, yes. I mean, I think Covid with, again, the reliance on people becoming a problem because there's quarantines, there's people out sick, those sorts of things that really drove home the need for more automation, more systemized processes where you're not relying on those specific people. So that helped a lot. And of course everybody doing the e-commerce ordering and those sorts of things, that whole fulfillment side of the people's businesses really picked up and that drove a lot of what we were trying to do or trying to reinforce. So not a great time, but it was interesting to see really an application of those concepts really pulling it out of specific people's heads, putting it into the system so that you can remain stable or grow without relying on those individuals.
Chuck Coxhead (00:07:12):
Yeah, indeed. I experienced a story about two years ago where somebody walked into previous place of employment and they said, I estimate that I need to add 25% to my workforce, and this is primarily a warehousing operation. He said, and I can't get 'em. So they decided to start investing in technology to see if they could bridge the gap and improve the productivity by that amount. And as it turns out, those solutions are out there and thanks to people like Insight works. So that's great stuff and we're going to get into that little teaser. We have a demo for you first of many of all the apps that are offered by Insert Works. We have a demo for you at the end of this or the tail end of this podcast. So I think it would be easy to love you honestly if I'm a customer. But what are they telling you? I mean, why are they falling in love with your solutions?
Mark Hamblin (00:08:12):
Well, it must be my personality
Chuck Coxhead (00:08:18):
Couldn't
Mark Hamblin (00:08:18):
Be that, but it
Chuck Coxhead (00:08:20):
Could be. It could be.
Mark Hamblin (00:08:22):
No, I think obviously we meet their needs, we have very good solutions that meet those customer's needs, and those needs really are what we've talked about, improving the productivity, systemizing the processes, things like that. But just as importantly, we have that end-to-end mindset. So yes, you can just buy the warehouse management or just the production scheduling piece or whatever little app solution you want to fill out that specific gap that you're having issues with. But we have that end to end mentality where we'll take you from procurement all the way up to shipping with seamlessly integrated suite of solutions. So rather than getting your w m s from one person and your manufacturing stuff from somebody else, and you're planning from somebody else, you come to Insight Works and we can provide you that whole breadth of solutions that's very focused on the specific things that are going to help make you money. And we say improve productivity. That's a bit of a euphemism for helping you make money, helping you improve your bottom line. So we're not focused on things that are kind of fluffy or whatever that aren't going to help improve that bottom line
Chuck Coxhead (00:09:44):
Well beyond the bottom line. I love that as a suite of solutions that cover numerous different areas, functional areas of the business, I love that you can implement a number of them or as is probably most appropriate for companies, is you're going to tackle one project at a time or maybe two at a time, and it gives you the ability to take on one or two apps in your case, improve the functional areas, and then incrementally improve ala continuous improvement methodology. And then to have it be seamless, seamless in that it's designed to work for Business Central and that it's designed to work together clearly. So it's a wonderful thing. It's not an all or nothing expenditure, particularly for something like Business Central. Business Central. It's really suitable for the small and medium business. And so the biggest turnoff is I'm going to have to have hundreds of thousand dollars project investment to be able to take this leap. This allows you to bite off in imaginable chunks that you can chew, which is a fantastic approach to be able to do that. A lot of companies would come in and say, I'm going to give you this great big comprehensive system add on to Business Central that does all of it. You've given it to us in snack size and couldn't appreciate that more. And I'm certain that the customers do as well.
Mark Hamblin (00:11:08):
And sort of along those lines, and maybe another reason why people love us is we give away. You said we give you this big solution. Well, we actually do give away a lot of our solutions when we're talking about warehouse management and barcoding. Our W M S Express product is completely free, and for probably 75% of the people out there that need to do some level of barcoding or warehouse management, it's all they'll ever need. It's not a teaser like here's this little taste and if you really want to do something important, you have to buy the full subscription version. Again, 75% of the people out there is a rough estimate are going to be able to take that free product and run their distribution center with it or their parts room or their retail outlet. So we have a number of those free applications that help people get started with it. And some of them may get the free applications, say, this is great, but I need to do more. And then there's a way to move forward with the subscription versions of those applications.
Chuck Coxhead (00:12:12):
Well, that sounds like a superpower to me. If you understand the market that well and you understand and are able to give to the market in a way that serves the greater good, honestly, then why wouldn't customers fall in love with you? Truly
Mark Hamblin (00:12:33):
People ask, why do we give away this stuff for free? And it's because I have trouble making friends. This is the only way I can get people.
Chuck Coxhead (00:12:42):
I do too. The only way I can do it is they ask and be on podcast. Right.
Mark Hamblin (00:12:46):
Well I like you anyway, whether I'm on the podcast or not.
Chuck Coxhead (00:12:51):
Well, thank you. You flatter me, sir. You and my mom. So let's break it down. So there's a number of different applications. We know the general areas. It wouldn't surprise me that you either do or do not have them off the top of your head, but what are the apps that are out there from,
Mark Hamblin (00:13:13):
Well, if we break it down into sort of the broad areas, it's sort of the retailer, the counter sales side of it, the manufacturing portion and the warehouse management portion. A lot of times an organization will need all three of those. When we get into the individual categories of products, like let's talk about manufacturing, anything from, so we have an advanced scheduling product, we have a version, very simple to use. You plug it in, you hit a button and you've got your production schedule, capacity constraint, everything else. Again, it takes business central to that next level. And then the advanced version of that takes business central up into almost like a tier one ERP area where we can do that level of scheduling. So people that are looking at maybe the Dynamics 365 supply chain f and o type solution
Mark Hamblin (00:14:07):
May not have to go to that because they've got our solution to do the work down execution. So the manufacturing execution where we can capture time, do quality capture, all of those sorts of things. So the manufacturing side is very much on the planning execution side of things. When we get into the warehouse management, there's a ton of applications there for, again, just barcode scanning using mobile devices to go out there and manage your warehouse all the way out to shipping. So we've got again, another free product where the application is free for shipping, but it integrates with 60 different carriers. You can get your rates, your labels, everything else, or we've got the full blown version of that dynamic ship that allows you to do L T L shipping. You can get rate shopping, schedule pickups, parcel shipping, all those sorts of things, inventory counts, cycle counts, scheduling, pretty much anything you'd need to do in the warehouse. We have a solution for that, either as part of our full warehouse Insight or is one of these separate products, a lot of which are free and some just plug into Warehouse Insight. Oh sorry, go ahead.
Chuck Coxhead (00:15:18):
No, you go.
Mark Hamblin (00:15:19):
The last piece is the counter sales because we have a lot of manufacturers that have parts counters or distributors that have outlet stores and things like that, and just a number of plain retail, smaller retail outlets. And we have a solution for that as well. Our counter sales solution that allows people to go out and do retail through Business Central much more easily than Standard Business Central. So really intended for sort of B two B trade desk counter sales type of environments.
Chuck Coxhead (00:15:51):
And for people who don't pay attention to this who aren't geeks for this stuff like we are, I don't think that the general public recognizes just how many of those businesses are out there between the small manufacturers. All you ever hear is manufacturing negativity about manufacturing, I'm not buying it. They're all over the place, across the land, across the globe, still in the United States and Canada and the warehouses are spraying up on every corner. But you talk about the counter sales people really don't. They think of that as the Walmart and the Target and the grocery store, but the small distributor who's doing H V A C parts, electrical parts, they might be doing something that's automotive related, what have you. They are everywhere. They're doing pipe fittings, they're selling, selling every manner of hardware out there and they are buried these buildings near you and you have no idea that they're there. A lot of 'em are small family owned businesses. Some of them of course are nationwide and they have many, many male locations. A lot of them are small regional businesses and they're crucial because they're the ones who keep the parts and the products flowing to the service providers for you. They're absolutely crucial to keep you up and running.
Mark Hamblin (00:17:09):
Exactly. And where we fit in that area with counter sales is it's not traditional retail. You can't put in a traditional point of sales solution and expect somebody at a trade desk or a parts scanner to be able to use that to effectively figure out what you need and create purchase orders for your special orders, all those sorts of things. So we really address that market and we've got a lot of people that have come from that area, parts sales and those sorts of things that have fed their experience into that product.
Chuck Coxhead (00:17:47):
And likewise, I don't think that people recognize, again, when they think of warehouse and distribution, they're thinking, of course the big Amazon pops into mind, but then you have companies like Chewy and Walmart and Wayfair and all these companies. But again, there are smaller distribution companies, there are smaller warehouses that are popping up everywhere. They've been here forever. But of course as the economy has evolved, so has the need for more of this warehouse space for closer to point of use to decrease cost. They reduce some of the centralization or if they're doing very, very well, they grow and they have smaller spaces. I know that there are all those three pls. People don't recognize that the three pls have multiple customers and they may very well just be a relatively small business In the scheme of things, it looks like it's huge because it has this great big building, but that may be their only location. It may not be one of the behemoths. And so they would certainly be an SS M B. They would certainly be somebody who could use Business Central and there would certainly need the kind of things that Insight works has to offer.
Mark Hamblin (00:19:01):
Exactly. And those are the types of people we're after. Definitely.
Chuck Coxhead (00:19:08):
So let's narrow it down a little bit. So you came prepared to show us something today, and I'm kind of excited about it honestly because it is warehouse related and if there's a place where it's so super easy to find return on investment, it's in inventory handling and warehouse, it's just so super easy because when you go mobile you can do all sorts of things. You go from paper pick sheets and maybe the first evolution was you put a laptop on a cart, god forbid, and you were going directly in, but you can really speed up productivity when you go mobile. And even nowadays everyone's so interested in hands-free where you can free up these and keep your eyes forward and great many things improve. But you came prepared to show us something like that today and I'm a geek for it, so I would
Mark Hamblin (00:20:01):
Love to see it. Yeah, I'll show you a couple of things I was actually going to do a little more than usual, but we'll try and keep the, I don't want to get you too excited.
Chuck Coxhead (00:20:11):
You can go on, this is what I have to do this afternoon, so you can go as long as you want.
Mark Hamblin (00:20:18):
Okay, excellent. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just show my desktop here and what you see here is our typical mobile device for a warehouse. And I'm going to walk you through a little bit of this and what you see over on the side here is the screen for the device that I've got here. So as I touch the device, you'll see the screen update and I'll walk you through a little bit of how this works. But you made a comment on the hands free there. Lemme just get that out of the way. And I thought I'd also show this because I don't show this very often, but here's that example of a hands-free setup. So you can see my hand there, I've got this little ring scanner and I've got this device on my wrist and this is how we can set it up to work.
Mark Hamblin (00:21:07):
So a lot of people talk about the voice picking and things like that, and that's another option as well. But I find this far more productive because we can set it up so that I can just walk up to an item I need to pick, right? I've got it on my screen here, I can angle it whatever I want to do, I can see what I'm supposed to do. I go beep and it's handled. And so it's far faster than paper picking, voice picking everything else, and I'm getting that physical verification that I'm actually doing the right thing. And that's an important thing to talk about when we talk about barcoding. A lot of people it's termed automated data collection, a, D, C and even old B A D C S, the automated data collection system. And when we're talking about improving our productivity in the warehouse or improving our efficiency, I can go out and I can do a paper-based pick way faster probably than I can do it with a scanner.
Mark Hamblin (00:22:08):
The hands free, I can do it faster probably with the hands free, but I can go out there and I can take a piece of paper and go grab something and go check it off on the piece of paper and it takes me half a second to record that I've picked that product on my piece of paper. Then I can add that piece of paper in and somebody just goes, if there's no exceptions, if there's a check mark beside everything, they hit a button, they fill the pick in business central and they post it, they register. So that's extremely fast. You'd think that's really efficient. The guy can go out there and he can zip down that aisle and it takes him a quarter second or half a second to mark the fact that he's picked that item. That's really efficient. Well, it's not that's false efficiency or false concept of efficiency because what happens is then they take it over to shipping, shipping, throws it all in a box, sends it out, and then the customer phones and ship me all the wrong stuff or you miss something or whatever.
Mark Hamblin (00:23:06):
The big deal, the big efficiency improvement you get with barcode scanning is that physical verification. That's what you're getting from the system because I'm able to grab something, scan this cardboard box, it looks exactly like the cardboard box beside it, and I can ensure that I'm actually picking the right product and shipping the right product and I've got that real time feedback into the system. So yes, in some cases if people are using typical handheld scanners like this guy and depending on the level of scanning enforcement they set up in the system, it may take a little longer to scan barcodes versus jot down on a piece of paper. But what it's doing is it's approving your inventory accuracy, it's preventing your mis picks, it's preventing your miss ships, and that is where you're going to get those efficiency improvements. You don't have to have a team of 10 people doing QC on the outbound shipments. It's handled because I physically verified it with the scanner. Right? That's the big advantage of scanner. Well
Chuck Coxhead (00:24:06):
Interestingly enough, I am such a geek for this that I have actually done all these time studies and the striking part for me is if you think about the paper process, a person in the office, whether it be the back room or the shipping office, they generate out a paper pick list and then they hand that off to someone typically who then takes that and then they go into the picking process and then when they're done that paper pick list then gets sent off to someone else who now does the data entry. If you're doing the data entry live, you eliminate the need for that time spent.
Mark Hamblin (00:24:43):
As
Chuck Coxhead (00:24:43):
You say. I will tell you, if you're someone like me and I could certainly be involved in a picking operation, I certainly have the skillset, but I am okay. And then I go over was that, oh wait, was that three or four? Oh, it was three. Alright. That fraction of a second begins to add up.
Mark Hamblin (00:25:03):
And
Chuck Coxhead (00:25:03):
Those are just some examples of what can happen when you take that out. And then of course when you have barcode verification, as you mentioned, you're literally improving your accuracy. Not only are you doing a better job of picking more accurately in the first place, you're ensuring that your inventory count is adjusted more accurately. So you talked about cycle count scheduling and all that stuff. Well yes, but depending on the accuracy of your cycle counts, imagine if you were able to decrease the frequency of your cycle counts or decrease the lot sample of your cycle counts because you've done a statistical analysis that says yes, in general my accuracy tends to be here so I don't need to check as often. That's also time saved.
Mark Hamblin (00:25:47):
Exactly.
Chuck Coxhead (00:25:47):
So people are so stuck in the moment of the moving of the part. They forget that total system back to that system's thinking again, you get the totality of the time spent in these operations and it's massive. And then of course if you're not checking your orders and you can hire fewer or repurpose fewer of your QC people into more value added valuable work for the customer. Wow, that's more time reduced. All because you went to this.
Mark Hamblin (00:26:16):
So
Chuck Coxhead (00:26:16):
The hands free allows you to further increase the productivity of the person,
Mark Hamblin (00:26:23):
But
Chuck Coxhead (00:26:23):
Going mobile affects the entire system.
Mark Hamblin (00:26:26):
I love that. Exactly. See why I'm
Chuck Coxhead (00:26:28):
A geek.
Mark Hamblin (00:26:30):
Yeah. You mentioned the time studies, what's being proven and it's kind of common sense, it seems obvious is most of the time in the warehouse is spent walking around. The more you can reduce that, the better. And that's where the inventory accuracy comes back in. The default behavior on our solution is I verify the bin that I'm picking from so that
Chuck Coxhead (00:26:50):
I
Mark Hamblin (00:26:50):
Didn't just find some of this product sitting and receiving and scanned it there. So I verify the bin, I verify the item and you don't have to verify the bin. But by doing that improvement in inventory accuracy reduces the amount of time we spend wandering around the warehouse. Why is that? Well, next time we generate a pick, we know the exact quantities of those items in the individual bins. We're not sending you to bin A one thinking there's product there when in fact there isn't. Somebody was supposed to pick from bin B two, but they just grabbed it from a one, it was there. So now what we're doing is we can be very efficient, very accurate in where we send people to grab that inventory and
Chuck Coxhead (00:27:29):
That
Mark Hamblin (00:27:29):
Save massive amounts of time. You can imagine a temp warehouse worker or somebody that's just being hired, they get a pick ticket, says go to bin A one, he gets there, it's empty. What does that cost you in time? He's either going to have to run back into the office or find somebody who knows what's going on or he's going to wander up and down the aisles for half an hour trying to find this thing or he is just not going to ship it. What does that do to your bottom line? What does that do to the entire system? So that inventory accuracy manifests improvements in all sorts of different ways.
Chuck Coxhead (00:28:03):
And just as I look at the apple on the screen here, I think about that time spent and that time moving. So warehouse worker one looking on the screen, they have a pick operation. Okay, what I want you to do is I want you to go over, I want you to do these picks. Alright, you know what? Let's let warehouse workers two, three and four work on that. I need you to go over, we just got this and I need you to work on putaway. They don't need instruction. They literally take their device and they go and they switch into putaway and they switch their mode. And I love the agility that it creates. If you have cross-trained your workers, all that is enabled just by the fact that you give them mobile device and you have the app, the warehouse management system that'll lets them be agile and do the things that they need to do. Exactly,
Mark Hamblin (00:28:54):
Exactly.
Chuck Coxhead (00:28:55):
All that is enabling technology that just makes companies work so much better.
Mark Hamblin (00:28:59):
Exactly. And that real time feedback that you mentioned earlier is also vitally important. I normally say we want to keep our physical world and a virtual world and business central in sync to the
Mark Hamblin (00:29:15):
Highest degree possible. I want that virtual world and physical world to be the same because if I'm sitting in the office and I look in business central, I want that to be an accurate representation of what's happening in my warehouse, what my inventory is like, who's working on what, all of those sorts of things I want available in real time. That's what we're trying to accomplish with the scanning. And I mean we're talking about the warehouse management side, but this also goes for the production side, the shop floor side. So we have that same concept there where we can do that automated data collection and capture what people are working on so that we know what's happening so that we can do some analysis on the back end to say, is our standard costing correct or are we actually making money or as much money on these products we're producing as we expect. So yeah, again, the physical and virtual world, we want to keep those as tightly synced as possible.
Chuck Coxhead (00:30:07):
Well on the manufacturing side I'm thinking there are a number of small manufacturers who they may not have a particular piece part that's tens of thousands of pieces. They may have six. And by keeping that inventory in sync and as close to real time as possible, you come back and say, okay, I've got a rework situation. Alright, I can't just go pull apart, I've got six. If the inventory is not updated and I go pull apart or two parts or three parts. I know manufacturing operations where people actually hide parts in their bench. Okay, I've seen it with my own eyes. But if you have six pieces and those are already allocated, those are already committed and the inventory is not updated or virtually committed, the inventory is not updated, now you're in trouble and you find out way too late. Likewise in counter sales where they begin to integrate e-commerce into the situation and they don't have a lot. I think of when I used to have an rv go to the RV parts place, they don't have an abundant amount of inventory, but I can go in, I can buy it on e-commerce if my inventory is not updated. When they pull those parts then you can have a very disappointed e-commerce customer because they're ordering something that they thought was there and you thought was there, but you have a lag in inventory update time.
Mark Hamblin (00:31:26):
Exactly.
Chuck Coxhead (00:31:27):
And all that results in a bad customer experience In the case of manufacturing, delays, delays, delays in the case of e-commerce. Delays, delays, delays and frustration from the customer. Well I didn't know this was going to happen. And so I think about all of those things
Mark Hamblin (00:31:45):
And that customer satisfaction is a good metric. It's a bit subjective, but there's been lots of sort of research and improved on-time delivery specifically when we're talking manufacturing could actually improve your market share or at minimum maintain your market share over missed on-time deliveries. Right? Late deliveries. So I forget the exact number, I'll have to look. We have an R O I calculator on the website that has this, but I believe it's, I don't want to throw out the numbers, but it is fairly significant that customer satisfaction is important when we're shipping things, when we're manufacturing things, when making sure that we're shipping the right product, like from a shipping and warehouse manage perspective that we're producing the product on time, all of those things lead to improved market share that's being proven fairly conclusively
Chuck Coxhead (00:32:39):
Well, and I covered just for a brief bit about why customers would love you and that customer experience is absolutely crucial. If they stop loving you, good news travels slow, bad news travels around the world, lightning fast. People love to tell a bad story about somebody. Yes indeed. And those opportunity costs can be massive. Absolutely massive. Yes,
Mark Hamblin (00:33:08):
Exactly. Well
Chuck Coxhead (00:33:11):
I'm all a tingle. I'm ready.
Mark Hamblin (00:33:13):
Alright, so one thing I'll mention real quick before I jump into the demo, what you see on my wrist there, that is W M S Express, which you can use hands-free if you want, but WMS Express is that free version and you can kind of see on there what applications are available for it. But if you need to do sort of your core warehouse management activities, receiving picking or shipping inventory accounts, bin movements, that's all part of that WMS express, which is why large dcs could be using it or small parts rooms or retail outlet could be using that WMS Express very successfully. Alright, so that's all I'm going to talk about on the WMS Express. Now what we're going to do is jump in and walk through a little bit, sorry you can hear me taking my wearable off here. We're going to walk through and talk about, we're going to start at sort of after the sales order entry is in there. We've got a bunch of e-commerce orders that have come in. We've got manual sales orders that have been entered and now we need to send those out to the warehouse for fulfillment. We want to go through
Mark Hamblin (00:34:18):
And actually figure out what we can pick, what we can ship, those sorts of things. So to do that, where I'm going to start is actually here in Business Central. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start out by going to the order fulfillment worksheet. And this is something that again, standard Business Central doesn't do all that well. And by that I mean what can I ship today? The purpose of the order fulfillment worksheet is to tell you what you can ship today. So I've got on this one here loading. This is the first time I fired it up in a while, so it's taking a minute unfortunately to fire up and we'll take a sec here. So this has got about 500 orders or so in the system and what it's done is it's gone out for this particular warehouse that I'm working in here, it's gone out and it said, Hey, these are the orders that you can get out the door today.
Mark Hamblin (00:35:15):
This one I can partially ship this one, I can fully ship this one. I'm not allowed to ship at all or I can't ship because it's marked as ship complete. I don't have enough inventory for it. And this first one here is an aside. I can ship, this happens to be transferred to another warehouse, but I can only ship it if I pull some stuff out of my bulk storage area. So depending on how you have your business central warehouse location set up, you may have to first move it out of bulk storage before I can actually pick it and ship it. But that's what the thing does. It's going to go out and it's going to look by default based on my earliest ship date on that order, what can I actually get out the door today? And when we look at this earlier ship date, what that also means is it's handling your back orders for you.
Mark Hamblin (00:36:00):
You've been around and you've probably seen lots of different ways that people deal with back orders in a warehouse. And maybe not more often than not, but quite often they've got a clipboard out there with a bunch of sales orders that need to be shipped out and a PO comes in, they'll flip through it or something like that. Maybe it doesn't happen as often anymore, but that used to be pretty prevalent. Well this handles that for you. You don't have to have any special back order process. You run this sucker and if I've got a back order out there from a past date and inventory just came in or I somehow got inventory to fulfill that order, it's going to allocate it and that oldest order is going to get first crack at the inventory so it automatically handles those back orders for you. And then what it does for all of the orders that are on here, you can see on this particular one here, we've only got six available to pick and it's very intelligent in how it does this allocation.
Mark Hamblin (00:36:53):
It's going to look at reservations. So if you do want to specifically reserve product to a customer, it'll do that. If it's looking at lot expiration dates and things like that, it'll do that and it'll figure out exactly what you can pick. For this particular order we've allocated six of these items. We only have six even though we needed 15. So what that ends up meaning is we've got a partial allocation down here at this line here, we needed three, we've got 12 we can pick. So we've allocated all three. And what that means is if any of the orders further on below this need that item as well, well the next order is only going to have nine to choose from because we've allocated three out of this 12. And if that one needs nine, it's going to allocate all those nine to that and any future orders are not going to get that allocation.
Mark Hamblin (00:37:42):
So it's going sort of first come first serve based by default on the shipment date and automatically allocating that inventory and telling you if you can ship it or not. Now you might say, wow, maybe I do it by date first and look at anything that's in the past either by setting a filter here for anything that's in the past deal with my back orders, then I want to deal with my big customers next I want to make sure that my large orders always get fulfilled first. But we could go over here and you can choose any criteria on the screen or extend it to have more stuff. And I'm going to say, you know what? I'm going to actually sort by my order value. So these are big orders. I want to make sure that I fulfill as much of this order as possible first.
Mark Hamblin (00:38:23):
So rather than doing it by date, I'm now doing it by order value. And you can see here that some of these orders, I have no inventory at all because other orders above 'em have eaten up that inventory. But if I now go and say recalculate, it's going to go in and it's going to reallocate based on my new criteria and now we can see we can actually ship some of those larger orders. So it's an excellent tool for saying, okay, based on my specific criteria, maybe I want to do all my U P Ss orders first store or again specific customer first or priority or something like that. Tell me what I can ship today. And once you've done it and you're ready to ship it, you can basically grab as many of these guys as you like, hit create picks and it'll create those pick documents for you automatically.
Mark Hamblin (00:39:11):
So a few clicks and you've got all your pick documents. You can either create a batch pick which combines all these orders into a single pick or split it up by customer number or by warehouse zone or whatever criteria you want to use to generate that pick document for the warehouse. Now the cool thing is you can also automate this. So that means every 10 minutes this thing can run in the background and spit out any pick documents that I need to process today. So as product is coming in the receiving side and getting put away or cross docked, any orders that come in, it's going to automatically match those up and spit out what I need to pick either based on partially available or maybe just ship the fully available product instead of partial and full. So it really automates that process of figuring out what you can ship today.
Mark Hamblin (00:40:04):
And we see this a lot. You go into a warehouse where you don't have a tool like this and the poor supervisor or the shipping manager or whatever is sitting there, he is got a stack of pick tickets and some of it he can pick some of it he can't. Some has to be fully shipped, some can be partially shipped and he's flipping through this stuff, figuring out what he's supposed to do and that's most of his day, four, six hours a day sitting there messing with that to end up with the same results as I got in 10 seconds thereby opening the screen. So that's the order of fulfillment worksheet. So once we've done this, we've created those picks, the next step is we're going to send that out to the warehouse so that they can start executing those pick documents. So what I do there is I'm going to go back to looking at my device here, come on, there we go.
Mark Hamblin (00:40:58):
Alright, took a second to transition and we're going to actually work on my mobile device here. Again, I'm going to be messing with this on the screen, but you see an update on the screen beside it in case you can't see the individual icons. So this is what I'm going to do and just so you know, I'm going to be scanning some sample barcodes. So these are the barcodes that I'll be scanning as I go through it. These are what we call data matrix codes. If you're generating your own barcodes, you can do it out of business central and we would typically use this style of barcode if you're using your own because we can fit a lot of information in there. For example, this one at the bottom that's got the lot number and the item number in that barcode. Well we can fit lot number, item number unit and measure quantity, expiration date, all of those things can fit in one barcode.
Mark Hamblin (00:41:46):
And if you're using GSS one barcodes or U P C barcodes and everything, that's fine. We can scan any barcode you like. But these data matrix codes to the point of making it easy on the people. You scan one barcode, you've got everything you need to process that item. And we didn't really talk about it too much, but one of the big challenges if you're doing paper-based picking is if you have serial numbers or lot numbers. Well that's where that automated data collection is extremely handy because I don't have to write down a serial number or I don't have to tell people what serial number to pick and they run out there and hunt through a bin to find a specific serial number. I scan that thing and it's there. I've got no issues, no mistakes, anything else.
Chuck Coxhead (00:42:26):
And if I may on that, a big part of our target market is defense related manufacturing and medical device related manufacturing and that lot capture and that serial number capture is crucial for traceability downstream. And so for those of you who out there think why would you want to get that a part as a part as a part, there are plenty of manufacturing activities where that is really, really crucial to pull that. And even those is the warehouse manufacturing operations that warehouse as well as well you need to capture
Mark Hamblin (00:42:59):
Exactly. Yep. Alright, so what I'll do is just in the interest of time here, I'm going to sort of skip all of these other applications that you see on the device, but I mean anything you need to do within the warehouse from the inquiry mode, which we can, that's actually a drill down as well. If I'm busy picking and I need more information, I can drill down and get more details about my inventory or the inventory counts I've got receiving and put away here, which incidentally a lot of people don't need that level of capability. If you're wanting to receive things, maybe do an inspection. We do have a good quality inspection solution as well, but I want to receive things inspected and then when it's ready, I want to go and put it in the warehouse and do this put away, well that's what you would use this for, but you don't have to do that.
Mark Hamblin (00:43:54):
I can receive directly against the purchase order or I could be receiving as I'm putting that product away. So lots of different ways you can set up the solution. In my case when we talk about the picks, I've got two stage picking turned on. So I I tell the system I've completed this pick, everything is now moved over to shipping and our shipping can take it and do what they need on the shipping side to palletize it up or whatever. And I can also do the palletizing while I'm picking as well. So we do have that solution where we can build up pallets or boxes for u p s shipping or whatever you want to do or FedEx whatever carrier. And then I don't have to do a separate packing operation. I've packed it while I've picked it. So there's lots of things in there that I guess I could say I'm not going to get into but I just got into but I'm not going to show it on the screen. You get the general idea. So what I'm going to do, so I'm going to go in here and I'm just going to go into the picking application and the way this is built out is it's kind of designed to be by role. So each individual will have a role, they'll do a few different things like a picker when he is not busy, he might do bin replenishments or
Mark Hamblin (00:45:07):
He might move over to put aways and things like that. So on that main screen you can kind of tailor their main menu to match the type of work they're doing. But anyway, I'm going to pick here, and I should also mention this is also we're very driven by the physical reality in the warehouse. So what we're doing, and you mentioned this before as well, what I did was I opened up that picking application. Why did I do that? Because I have stuff to pick. The physical reality of the warehouse says, Hey, there's things you need to do. If I need to put things away, I see a pile of stuff that needs to put away, I'm going to go into that put away. I'm not going to have the system say, okay, first you're going to do this pick, then you're going to do this put away, then you're going to do this. I'm going to let the physical reality, the warehouse drive, which modules I go into. Okay,
Chuck Coxhead (00:45:59):
Yeah, and the experience of the workers too. So I can imagine that there are some workers who have a little bit more autonomy in some operations you have a senior person and they know how to adjust.
Mark Hamblin (00:46:10):
Exactly. Exactly. Now sort of along those lines, I'm in the picking screen here and it says scan a pick document or select one from the list. Well, there's lots of things you can do here. A lot of people still print that paper copy of the pick ticket and the reason is it
Mark Hamblin (00:46:27):
Becomes a bit of a traveler when I drop it off at shipping, they know what the heck I just dropped off at their feet and they can deal with it easily. There's other options you can use tote picking, which we have as well to eliminate some of that paper and those sorts of things. The other nice thing is if you're using paper-based picking, Hey there's a piece of paper on the printer, it means I have work to do. I grab a piece of paper, I scan it and off I go. So it's a nice physical trigger to get you moving, but in this case I'm just going to choose one of these picks right off the screen. And by the way, on that screen it had the two fields that had who it was assigned to and the pick document, but we can make any data available on that screen that you'd like.
Mark Hamblin (00:47:05):
That's all done from within Business Central. There's no separate database for this sucker, no separate anything. This is built into Business Central. You can think of this as this is now another business central client user interface that I'm using to manage my warehouse. But just to show you what I mean by that, if I tap the screen here and hit choose columns on a device by device or user by user basis, I can come in here and make any data I want visible on that screen either in a card view like the item card or a list view, like the item list. Well it's similar to what we have. We have a card that you can use for your picking or you can have a list that you use for your picking, like this is the list view. And again, you can add whatever fields you like on a per user basis or you can do it globally right from within Business Central and that includes custom fields. If you have some, maybe you added the weight field onto your pick and you want to pick by weight instead of by bin order. You can do that. That's dirt simple.
Mark Hamblin (00:48:05):
Now back to the actual operation of this location I'm in does have bins and items of course. And the default order I've got it here is I've got it set to sort by bins. So I'm starting at aisle one and going to aisle two and so on and so forth is the order I'm supposed to pick. But the way I execute this, this gives me a lot of context and a lot of flexibility in how I execute this pick. And again, you can disable that. I could go to a car view and force people to pick in a very specific order, but in this case I'm standing in aisle two, I'm not going to walk over to aisle one and start picking there. I'm going to start picking here in aisle two because I can see I've got stuff here to pick. So what do I do?
Mark Hamblin (00:48:43):
The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to scan the barcode of the bin that I'm in. So that is a gain to ensure our inventory accuracy. So scan that bin and it tells me at the bottom of the screen that yes, I've scanned that bin and that is a gain optional. We can turn that off. And sometimes if you only have fixed bins, you have one bin per item or sorry, yeah, basically one bin per item. That item is never going to be anywhere else. You might want to turn off that bin requirement, but I've got it on because we need that. And so now I scan that bin and then the next step is I'm going to scan the item that I'm picking from that particular bin. So I'm just going to scan, I'm going to start with that 1908 dash s thing that's partway down the screen and scan that guy. When I do it can option show you a picture and that's good visual verification we call it, right? If you're doing your own barcoding and I scan that thing that pops up a blue chair and I've got, I don't know, some bananas or something in my hand. I know I've got a big problem with the barcode and I can hopefully fix that up or at least not pick that product until it's sorted out. Now
Chuck Coxhead (00:49:52):
If you've got bananas in your hand, we've got bigger problems than inventory accuracy.
Mark Hamblin (00:49:56):
Well, I used to say underwear, but people found that maybe not quite right anyway.
Chuck Coxhead (00:50:01):
Well, apparently they've never been to Costco.
Mark Hamblin (00:50:05):
True, yes. As long as it's not your own underwear I guess that's fine.
Chuck Coxhead (00:50:08):
Oh yeah.
Mark Hamblin (00:50:10):
So now that I've done that, it's prompting me for quantity and there's lots of options here. Again, it's all about what your best practice physical process is. That's what you want to do. That's usually where I tell people to start. Figure out what your best practice physical process should be and then we can tailor the system through configuration to match that. If you don't care about people typing in the quantity, if they're going to grab something and you're just going to accept the fact, trust them that they've grabbed the right quantity, you don't even have to show this dialogue. You could scan that item and it just says, yes, you've picked four or we could set it up. So the default here is zero and I actually have to type in how many I've picked. So there's all sorts of things you can do around that.
Mark Hamblin (00:50:51):
Or you can force 'em to scan this thing four times and that could be set up per item anyway. In my case, I'm just going to hit enter on that to pick all four and it updates. So Business central is now updated without four. It tells me I've got none left to find. And if you want, you can hide any lines that have been fully picked. You can go in there and have it hide those as you're going through your pick. And so that the pick list just gets shorter and shorter as you complete your rounds. That's really all there is to picking. Right. I'll just, since we talked about lot numbers, we'll just scan an item with a lot number just to show you what that works or what that looks like. And again, because that lot number was in the barcode, it brings it in for me automatically.
Mark Hamblin (00:51:33):
And if it didn't bring it in, I could scan a secondary barcode with a lot number manually type it in, those types of things. But ideally you have everything in one barcode and I'm good to go or picking, assuming I've received that lot number properly, I could just scan the lot number. It'll figure out which item it is and all that kind of good stuff as well. The other cool thing that we have, I didn't have one here to show, but in the food industry we see quite often that the lot number and expiration date are just printed on the box. They're not a barcode, they're actually just matrix printed or whatever. We have scanners that can read that as fast as you can read a barcode. So you point it at the text as if it was a barcode and it'll go beep and it'll read that lot number and expiration date by OCRing the texts that we read in. So anyway, if you're doing lot numbers or serial numbers, this is how it works. And again, I just enter the quantity that I'm picking that particular lot number and it updates Business central and we're off to the races and that's how we do people.
Chuck Coxhead (00:52:35):
And I don't think that people, I hope they recognize, but certainly I want to point out just the elimination of that step, typing that in, typing in the quantity, just hitting enter to confirm, not having to go through several steps to capture the quantity, pick the lot number, the serial number, et cetera. Just how much time that can save. You're not talking about one or two or three or four or five of these a day. If that's the case, it's not that big a deal. The return on investment could take forever, but you can have operations, whether they're literally doing over a shift, thousands and thousands of picks and elimination of those key presses alone becomes a cost driver.
Mark Hamblin (00:53:20):
Exactly.
Chuck Coxhead (00:53:20):
And I can't impress upon people who don't live in this world or who thinking I'm this big today forgetting that they're inside the onion and there might be these out, sorry, layers they don't perceive yet. It can be a very amazing investment in your long-term productivity. Exactly. That kind of foresight that you put into the user interface.
Mark Hamblin (00:53:41):
Yeah, exactly. And along those lines, I mean it used to be, we've been doing this for a long time now, and it used to be that people didn't want to touch the screens ever. And I get that. I don't either, to be honest. Now we find more people preferring to tap the screen because they're used to their smartphone and everything else. But for the people that don't ever want to touch the screen, I don't have a lot of the shortcuts set up by default. But you can set up hotkeys on your keypad. So I never actually have to touch the screen ever on this interface if I don't want. So for the users out there that don't want to tap, tap, tap, it's very streamlined. Like I said, you could set it up so that I walk up to that item, I go, beep, and that's it. That's all I have to do to indicate I've picked that item. It's faster than voice, faster than paper.
Chuck Coxhead (00:54:30):
Absolutely.
Mark Hamblin (00:54:30):
And it gives me that physical verification that I did grab the right item. It doesn't validate that I picked the right quantity or from the right bin, but if that's the type of speed you need in, you're picking like you've got a pick face and you're just grabbing stuff out of bin, slapping it into a box on a conveyor. That's what you need. That's the type of performance you need.
Chuck Coxhead (00:54:49):
And I know of an application, I know of a company, as rare, rare as this probably is, they have many, many, many different products. But every single pick, they only ever pick one piece. And it's always the same product in the same size box in every single warehouse location. And every warehouse location only has one sku. You simply don't need all of that.
Mark Hamblin (00:55:17):
Right.
Chuck Coxhead (00:55:18):
It's scan and go.
Mark Hamblin (00:55:19):
Exactly.
Chuck Coxhead (00:55:21):
And every order size is exactly one.
Mark Hamblin (00:55:24):
Exactly. And those are the kinds of guys, even though it might be a large organization, but they've got a fairly simple process they don't need. That's the WMS Express. You don't even have to pay for the software to be able to use the barcodes to do it. Even if you have lot numbers and serial numbers and all that, it'll handle it. So those are the guys. I'm like, why do you want to pay for your W M S and your shipping software? We've got that stuff for free. It'll do everything you need. Right. So
Mark Hamblin (00:55:48):
I Talked about WMS Express for the free WMs, but we've also, I did mention Order Ship Express, which is the free shipping stuff. You don't get free shipping. The software is free. You still pay for your shipping. But of
Chuck Coxhead (00:56:00):
Course,
Mark Hamblin (00:56:01):
Yeah, it's
Chuck Coxhead (00:56:01):
Important point. That's a very important point.
Mark Hamblin (00:56:03):
Well, we struggled with that. How do we describe this? It's free shipping. Well, no, you don't get the shipping free, you get the software free. But yeah, for a lot of organizations, probably a majority of the organizations that need to do barcoding and have that shipping integration, why would you pay for it? We've got the solution out there and it's free and it'll probably meet your needs. You might be in the 40% or the 30% of whatever that range is, but you actually need something like Warehouse inside or Dynamic Ship. But for the vast majority of the rest of you grab it, it's free, use it. You don't even have to talk to us. You can just grab it and go. So anyway.
Chuck Coxhead (00:56:49):
No, that's amazing. And again, SS m b marketplace, right? That's the kind of thing that there are an awful lot of customers out there. You're doing God's work brother, to enable those companies to do what they need to do. And if you think about it from a business perspective, once they fall in love with you, we've already talked about attrition, they go somewhere else, well you know what? I love this product. And they take that experience with them and they share and then they can spread the love that his insight works with other companies. So there's a lot of merit in doing that. That's right. Everybody wants to share the good news
Mark Hamblin (00:57:29):
And that happens. It
Chuck Coxhead (00:57:30):
Sounds like a good news story.
Mark Hamblin (00:57:31):
That happens surprisingly often. We get somebody, Hey, I used to work at so-and-so and I'm here now. We want your stuff. It happens all, and actually we've had it quite often where it bubbles up from the actual warehouse. So they hired somebody to work in the warehouse and they're like, you should be using this. And it bubbles up and eventually they do it. So it's not just for the people managing the finance side of it or looking at the efficiency reports and everything else. The guys in the shop like this stuff, they actually like using it.
Chuck Coxhead (00:58:04):
I did a deployment of mobile warehouse mobile computers in a warehouse. And on that day the most knowledgeable person in the room was one of the pickers.
Chuck Coxhead (00:58:16):
He was geeking out over the technology. He was the one asking all the questions. Not the engineer, not the CFO, not the COO, not the president. It was one of the pickers was the most knowledgeable. So guess who we did all of our testing with? Makes
Mark Hamblin (00:58:32):
Sense.
Chuck Coxhead (00:58:33):
Not that that's an ideal situation. Sometimes you want to do it with the people who were the least skilled so you can really find out and give it more of a difficult test. But that's who we did it with on that day.
Mark Hamblin (00:58:43):
Right, right. Yeah, that's cool.
Mark Hamblin (00:58:45):
And I got sidetracked a little there, but we're talking about sort of the efficiency key presses and all that. And one of the things I'll just quickly mention, I mean you can't really see it that well, but I'm going to hit one of those hotkey on my keypad to execute one of the menu items. And that menu item happens to be the item inquiry. So this is a drill down mode I briefly mentioned earlier where I can come in and say, Hey, I scanned that item and I could only find 25, I needed 50. What's going on? Where's the rest of it? Well, that drill down gives me the ability to find maybe an alternate bin to pick from. So I can come in here and I can see lot numbers per bin if you've got that setting enabled. So I can look at, oh, what's the next oldest lot number by expiry date that I can pick instead because I can't find the one on that down here you see this thing that's a fact box. So just like in Business Central, you can have fact boxes. Well, you can turn on any fact boxes you want within this as well. So quite often we see that when people are using tablets, right? I'm using this handheld device, but a lot of people who use tablets on a pick cart or forklift or whatever, well you got tons of screen real estate. You can put pictures on there, pick instructions,
Mark Hamblin (00:59:57):
Whatever the heck you want websites if you want, you can put whatever you want in a fact box for the most part. So anyway, you can tailor it to position it wherever you like. But anyway, we do fact boxes, but the item inquiry just again gives me some detail about the item and all that kind of stuff. And I can look at recent transactions or print a barcode label from here so we can print from the handhelds. Almost anything you like. All of these applications are built and maintained in Business Central. So if I want to go in and add a new menu item or add a new application, we have an application wizard. I'll get into it in a sec. Maybe you can tailor this to do whatever the heck you want. We've got some videos and knowledge base that teach you how to use the application designer within the system to make it do what you want anyway.
Chuck Coxhead (01:00:48):
And the item inquiry, I love that feature to being able to see all the other locations. Yes, sadly, sometimes inventory is inaccurate. Sometimes that happens. But I think about the evolution of warehousing and modern warehousing. It used to be everything was we have to work the way our human brains work. I want all of the same product and all the same predictable place because that's easier for this noggin. But the truth be told, we've found that you can reduce the distance traveled and the time spent by the pickers if you do more of a random. So you may have the same item in numerous places throughout the warehouse, and then as they optimize the picks, they can actually walk to the closest location based from the previous pick. But sometimes accuracy suffers as I said. And you have to come back to that and you've got to adjust. And then being have that option, that's when human intelligence, not artificial intelligence kicks in. And we can take care of that customer satisfaction by moving forward. And we can report the inventory because it says we only pick 25 and we can make sure that through whatever process we make sure that that gets back to the system for the inventory discrepancy.
Mark Hamblin (01:02:05):
Exactly. And along those lines, that item inquiry and various things like that, historically it has been just automated data collection. I've used that term a few times where it was an old green screen and a lot of people still use it.
Chuck Coxhead (01:02:19):
Yeah, sure.
Mark Hamblin (01:02:20):
And that's what it did. It let you scan barcodes and not much else. But this thing is a computer. We've got a computer in our hand, let's use it like a computer and not just a dumb terminal. That item inquiry, I can go in there quickly look it up. The alternative is I write this on the back of my hand and half an hour later in the office I try and figure out what the heck I wrote down and figure out what I'm supposed to do with it. Right? So it is very cool. And one of the cool things about these guys is you can run teams on this. A lot of people are running teams. I want to use this as a walkie-talkie. Well teams actually has a walkie-talkie mode and now I've got a walkie-talkie, I can't find something. I hit talk and broadcast everybody else. Hey, anybody know where this is Beyond just what we provide. Just having these computers in your hand out in the warehouse helps a lot.
Chuck Coxhead (01:03:12):
It sure does. And think about the supervisors who may have email and they may need other functionality as well beyond that. That's what
Mark Hamblin (01:03:21):
Exactly
Chuck Coxhead (01:03:22):
They are, I call them a mobile computer on purpose. That's what it is. It's a mobile computer. Now the CK 65 that you're holding doesn't look like a phone, but if you were holding the Honeywell CT 47, that would look very much like a phone. And while it may or may not have the SIM card in it, that enables that phone capability, there it is.
Chuck Coxhead (01:03:44):
While it may or may not have that SIM card enable the phone capability, people think of it as a phone. But really in this context, as you said, Mark, it is a mobile computer in every way. It has more processing power by many miles over my old Commodore 64.
Chuck Coxhead (01:03:59):
So It is a computer.
Mark Hamblin (01:04:00):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Alright, so that in a nutshell is picking, there's a lot more I didn't get into on the picking side, but what we do is tell people it's everywhere in the system. Typically it's bin item quantity, like bin item, optionally enter quantity. And that's how you use the system. So if you know how to use one application, you can essentially use 'em all. Like if I said, Hey, go do an inventory count now you could do it. You hit the count button on there and you'd go, okay, scan the bin, scan the item, and enter the quantity. And you're doing an inventory count, right? So it's very nice.
Mark Hamblin (01:04:37):
One of the things I will quick, well actually lemme back out. I was going into shipping there. But see these applications at the bottom of the screen here, this requisition app and the job consumption app. Well those guys aren't really part of the solution. I built those myself inside Business Central using the application wizard. I didn't write any code. I went next, next filled in some fields and a few other things that I needed and built these applications. And now I can consume against the job journal or I can create requisition worksheets using the scanner. That's how extensible the solution is me. 10 minutes
Chuck Coxhead (01:05:14):
And we all,
Mark Hamblin (01:05:14):
Sorry, go ahead.
Chuck Coxhead (01:05:15):
We all know how important and low-code have become Microsoft. So I love that you are really growing the capability within that particular objective because we know what it can bring to the orgs that are out there. They're going to choose this.
Mark Hamblin (01:05:29):
Exactly. And one last little thing while I'm here, beyond the warehouse management, you can do all sorts of things, proof of delivery and all sorts of things within the system. And I'll just highlight another one. What we sometimes see on the shipping side is the need to capture signatures and things like that. Well, we can also take photos. So a lot of people just sign the paper document from within here. We can take a photo of those documents or damage product or whatever you want. It'll automatically upload and attach into Business Central. But for this example, I just created my own little signed document extension effectively. Again, no code required. I went into Business Central and I dragged and dropped a few Lego blocks and now when I tap this menu item, I get to come in and sign my name and say it was, well, let's say it was Jed today.
Chuck Coxhead (01:06:16):
Oops. I was going to say quick. Let me take a screenshot. Oh
Mark Hamblin (01:06:20):
Yeah. So why is it not typing? Lemme just, so in this case, I don't know how to type. So I'm going to use the built-in Android thing and we're going to say it was Joe and I'm going to record that. And what I just did there was it attached that signature up to the sales order that I'm working on. Simple as that. And that took me, well, I went through and explained what I was doing, so it took about 10 minutes. But if I didn't have to explain what I was doing while I was doing it, that would've been a
Mark Hamblin (01:06:50):
Five minute job to add that type of functionality to the solution. So anyway, it's very comprehensive out of the box, but it's also very extensible to allow you to do things that you maybe didn't think you needed until you realized you could do it.
Chuck Coxhead (01:07:05):
Yeah. Let's see. You capture a signature with just a handheld barcode scan. Good luck with that.
Mark Hamblin (01:07:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Chuck Coxhead (01:07:12):
Ain't no doubt. Ain't no doubt. Well if an image is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a hundred thousand, well this live walkthrough has been worth about a hundred million.
Mark Hamblin (01:07:23):
No. Excellent.
Chuck Coxhead (01:07:23):
So I mean you just can't get much better than that. And we were geeking out in prep over this and how we make all that happen, the technology on the screen, and heck, give us a call. We'll teach you that too. What the hell? Or give that away for
Mark Hamblin (01:07:37):
Free.
Chuck Coxhead (01:07:38):
But is there anything you'd like to share with the folks before we go at risk of actually using a hundred million words?
(01:07:46):
I may have talked myself out, but really if you have any questions, just give us a shout. We'll be happy to do what we can to answer those for you.
Chuck Coxhead (01:07:55):
Well that's perfect and I'm very grateful for your time. The truth be told, everything they're going to need to go to know to learn about these applications, they can certainly find that in the show notes. They can get in touch with turnkey technologies and we'll make sure that they know how to find insert works. And I could not be more grateful for your time and your spending the afternoon with
Mark Hamblin (01:08:16):
Me doing this. It was a lot of fun. Better than my usual Thursday afternoon. So thanks very much for having me on. It was fun.
Chuck Coxhead (01:08:22):
Okay, absolutely. And with all the things we have left to demo, I look forward to the next time.
Mark Hamblin (01:08:27):
Excellent. Thanks.
Chuck Coxhead (01:08:29):
Thanks.