This module is designed to help you manage the shipping process for a wide range of items, including customer assets, laboratory standards (M&TE), inventory products, and vendor orders. You may ship items using an outsourced carrier (like FedEx, UPS, or DHL, etc.), or by using your own drivers with a mobile application. The shipping module provides all the necessary tools for easy tracking (e.g. printing labels) and monitoring (e.g. Kanban dashboard) of shipments from pickup to delivery, whether to customers, vendors, or other facilities. Additionally, the mobile application allows your drivers to easily synchronize the scheduled Route agenda (pickups, deliveries, and tasks), record customer signature, and keep applicable parties (customers/vendors/staff) informed with real-time status updates.

Workflow

The system allows shipping to customers, to other facilities and to vendors. The distinction between their workflows is slight, so we’ll start with the customer shipper and touch the differences afterwards.

The process starts when shipping department has identified and split instruments by customer. Then, a shipper is created recording Ship-To information (such as customer address, contact, etc.), applicable shipping details (shipping method, shipping account, tracking # and comments), and shipped items (UUTs, Standards, Sale products and miscellaneous items).

When adding UUTs, the Quality Check dashboard is presented to the user, to verify that the instruments are returned with the expected quality (cleanliness, voids, proper label), the special requirements agreed with the customer, and with all received accessories. Approved unit Certs are stamped with the user’s quality check number, whereas Rejected units are returned to the lab for correction and a record of the incidences is kept for quality purposes in the Rejection Log.

Once finished the entry, the shipper document is stamped and the instruments are now ready to be routed for delivery or shipment. It’s worth mentioning that a shipper may be kept in hold by Admin personnel when the customer has no credit, but once released (e.g. after a Payment) they are ready to be Shipped.

After all shippers of the day are created, the Route plan is assigned to drivers and synced to their Mobile devices for delivery using the Route App. Each driver will follow the plan and deliver each shipper.

When presented with the customer, the driver will prompt the customer for his signature using the Mobile App, which will in turn email a digital copy of the signed shipper, cc customer service and updating info real-time into CalMetro calendar.

Play

The process of creating an office shipper is very similar. Team members may create a Shipper for a wide range of items, including customer assets to be outsourced to another facility, laboratory standards (M&TE), and inventory products to be transferred to a different warehouse or to fulfill a sale order as well as purchased assets or miscellaneous items. Usually all items have a label attached for easier scanning thru a barcode scanner, but in the case of miscellaneous items (e.g. boxes, envelopes, etc) a label may be printed and attached to it for easy receiving/tracking at the destination.

The process to ship to a vendor is similar to shipping to a customer or another facility, except that it usually requires recording an RMA or PO, and it’s kept open until units are returned to the laboratory where the shipping department has to check-in every unit to update the status.

Receiving a set of items from a carrier sent by another facility or a customer or receiving a Purchased item directly from the Vendor are very similar tasks. The process starts by searching the Document number (Shipping #, PO #, Vendor Invoice) or filtering it out within the Kanban dashboard. Then, each item in the Shipper list shall be checked-in with a barcode scanner.

The system automatically handles updates of shipper status, asset’s location and status, inventory location and warehouses quantities, and PO phases, correspondingly. Also, an email notification may be sent to the applicable parties (recipient and shipped by, PO requestor, as well as other stakeholders) for every phase of the shipment process, until Delivered.