So you're a startup just getting into the game, or maybe you're considering getting into the business, or perhaps you're just a curious individual. Whatever the case, if you're new to perishable fulfillment you're in the right place. This guided tour will hold your hand the whole way through and you'll be slinging jargon left and right by the end.
Introduction
To get right to the quick and dirty of it, what we're looking at is getting perishable goods to consumers. Perishable goods are typically food that is not shelf-stable, or food the is not safe to eat for very long without proper handling. Additionally, this topic concerns many other types of products including, but not limited to, beverages, medicine, cosmetics, and many more. The additional handling required to keep the products fit for use add numerous complications to the already complex problem of logistics. Lets start by taking a look at shelf-stable logistics and once we've explored that we'll look at fulfillment in the perishable realm.
Shelf-Stable Fulfillment
Fulfillment is a part of logistics concerned with distribution. Lets break that down. "Logistics" is a catch-all term to describe the workings of any system involving many moving parts. In our context we are referring specifically to a supply chain. To expand more, this encompasses the full lifespan of a good from manufacturing to consumption. Now, to narrow our view, "distribution" refers to the part of the supply chain that moves goods to consumers. So for now we won't worry about how the goods are manufactured because that will be unique to every business. However, everyone has to store their product, and everyone has to distribute it.
Inventory
Storing product is a bit more complicated than just throwing products in boxes in a room. Depending on a business' manufacturing process and order volume there may be a need to store massive quantities of product of many different types. Organizing inventory becomes a big job very quickly; products not only need to be counted and recorded, but also easy to find again when it comes time to fulfill orders.
Databases
Typically inventory holders keep track of the stock with a database which, put simply, is an intelligent, virtual version of the inventory. To expand on that, imagine a store owner who wants to see all items in his inventory that are over a month old. With only a physical inventory this is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do. The store owner would have had to keep detail records and spend untold hours tediously cross-referencing said record with the items in the warehouse. However, if he had a database record of the inventory it would be a simple question answered in less than a second. Databases hold data with a set of attributes that are often set up custom for the database users specific needs. For example, as above, the store owner may enter items into his database with an attribute that is a time-stamp of when the item was added. Then when he wants to know which items have been in stock over a month he just asks the database this question, which is called querying. The database then runs this query against each item, checking its attributes, and returns the requested result. This result is sometimes nearly instantaneous, but can sometimes take a more significant amount of time based on the size of the data set; computers can only do so much work at once.
Receiving
The recording inventory into this database we've discussed happens during a process called receiving.
Distribution
Storing product is a bit more complicated than just throwing products in boxes in a room. Depending on a business' manufacturing process and order volume there may be a need to store massive quantities of product of many different type. Organizing inventory becomes a big job very quickly
Perishable Fulfillment
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