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Published on September 4, 2023
The release of SAP S/4HANA 2022 EWM brings with it a range of innovative features designed to enhance warehouse operations. Skip lot is an excellent toolset, driving efficiency and flexibility within supply chain management. Read more to get some valuable insights.
Streamlining efficiency with skip lot.
The skip lot in SAP EWM allows users to bypass certain quality inspections for predefined product lots, significantly streamlining the inspection process. In scenarios where quality control has already been performed at an earlier stage, inspecting every single lot can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Skip lot empowers businesses to define specific criteria under which inspections can be skipped for certain lots. By leveraging skip codes and predetermined quality attributes, such as vendor or product-specific criteria, companies can automatically skip inspections for prequalified lots.
This reduction in inspection time not only accelerates inbound processes but also optimizes resource allocation, ensuring that inspections focus on critical lots that genuinely require attention.
Benefit of flexibility in quality control.
With skip lot, users gain high level flexibility in managing quality control processes. It enables businesses to adapt inspection rules based on individual product characteristics, supplier trustworthiness, or specific customer requirements. This flexibility empowers organizations to fine-tune their quality control efforts to align with their unique business needs, optimizing operational efficiency while maintaining product quality.
By reducing the frequency of inspections, organizations can allocate their resources more efficiently and focus on critical quality control activities. Skip lot promotes collaboration and trust between organizations and their suppliers. The supplier´s consistent delivery of defect-free materials is acknowledged. This approach strengthens the relationship, leading to better collaboration, improved communication and more favorable terms for future transactions.
But as always, there is another side of the coin. There is reduced visibility into the quality of those skipped lots. This may make it difficult to identify emerging trends or issues that could affect product quality or customer satisfaction. Organizations may miss the opportunity to detect and address quality problems before they become more significant.
Some industries or specific products may have stringent regulatory or compliance requirements that mandate inspections for every lot. Implementing skip lot inspections may not align with these requirements and could lead to non-compliance, resulting in legal and regulatory consequences.
Requirements for skip lot implementation.
To implement skip lot inspections effectively, organizations also must have a robust supplier evaluation and monitoring process in place. It is crucial to thoroughly assess suppliers’ quality performance, reliability, and consistency before considering skip lot inspections. Additionally, ongoing monitoring of supplier quality is necessary to ensure that they maintain the required standards over time.
Skip lot inspections require careful statistical analysis and determination of appropriate skip lot criteria. You need to establish robust statistical models to identify the lots that can be skipped without compromising quality.
To sum up, automating inspection skip decisions based on predefined criteria, businesses can expedite inbound processes, allocate resources more effectively, and enhance customer satisfaction. But it also depends on supplier quality and expertise in statistical process control and the understanding of manufacturing processes.
Although you should keep some considerations in mind, with skip lot businesses can unlock significant efficiency and gain a competitive edge in supply chain management.
Westernacher´s team of experts is ready to guide you.
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