Serial & Batch Stock Management

Introduction

Serial and batch are two different concepts which give us and ability to track an trace stocks in warehouses and control the whole lifecycle of the item from prucurement to sales and even return process.

These two keeping concepts will give us an ability to control, prioritize, and manage stocks in warehoses.  

Serial number management and batch management are different functions that can be used in conjunction with each other.

Batch Management

Group of material with similar characteristics can be assigned under a Batch. 

A batch represents a non-reproducible subset of the total quantity of a material held in stock, which is managed separately from other subsets of the same material.

For Example, Different production lots (for example, paints, wallpapers, pharmaceutical products), delivery lots or quality grades of a material.

Therefore, Batch Management is used in the entire logistics process from procurement to sales. Batches are the subset of a total quantity held in stock. Batch Management helps to trace the material in case of complaint. For Example, in the FMCG industry, if a material is produced and supplied in the retail market. One of the retailer complains of a defect in the product. It necessitates for the manufacturer to track the entire material that has been produced in one lot. This production lot manufactured can be tracked and  taken back from the market effectively if the batches are assigned to the material. Hope you understand.

Serial Management

When you assign serial number profile to material in work scheduling view. Whenever a new material is produced or procured then a serial number will be assigned to the material either manually or automatically. Serial number is used for tracking purpose also.

Whereas a serial number is a number that you give to an individual item of material in addition to the material number, in order to differentiate between this individual piece and all other items of the material.

Therefore, Serial no. is basically created for a material which are same in shape and size but have different no.

On the other hand, in non-production businesses serial will give us a wide complete and detial view of tracking and controlling stocks inside and outside of the warehouse. Therefore, serial management will decrease the performance of inbound process but with a quick glance, you can see that the advantages of this method outweigh the disadvantages.

Combination

One of the optimize way to control stocks is combination of these two ways, that means during the inbound process we can generate both batch no. and serial no. on of the biggest advantages of this method is keeping both bulk and minority stocks keeping in the same place and we can have greate ability to replenishment in case of any charging from bulk to serial.

To Be Continued...