The second half of 2024 has, as usual, been a busy time for the OrderFlow development team, with new features and projects covering many different areas. Since our last customer release announcement, we’ve had three software releases (4.4.4, 4,4,5 and 4.4.6) with OrderFlow 4.4.7 due for release in the first half of January 2025.

Below are some of the highlights.

New OrderFlow theme

We’re excited about changes we’ve introduced to the OrderFlow look and feel with the new ‘Tangier’ theme. The theme has a crisper, more modern look, with less redundant white areas, and dynamic sizing of elements to make best use of the whole screen width.

Integrations

We’ve added a couple of new integrations in these releases and developed mechanisms that allow product and licence plate labels to be produced using third party systems. Our first integration that uses this framework to generate labels is with the ChemWatch Chemicals Management API.

We’ve also added an integration with EZRentout, a third party software platform used for equipment and asset rental.

Courier Tracking Events

For some time OrderFlow has allowed courier tracking events to be stored against the relevant outgoing shipment. With OrderFlow 4.4.6 we’ve added an integration endpoint that allows third party systems to post these events into OrderFlow directly. These events can be retrieved from reports, or viewed on the shipment details screen.

Purchase Order Generation

Previous releases have provided a number of reports to assist with purchase order generation. We’ve taken this a step further by generating draft purchase orders directly within OrderFlow. Once created, lines can be added, removed or adjusted prior before being finalised and sent to suppliers.

Receipt and putaway

In recent releases we’ve added some really useful new features around delivery receipt and putaway. We’ve added a desktop-based mechanism for receiving items onto licence plates, and a mechanism to customise the suggested target locations for receipts based on the intended usage of the stock being received.

We’ve added new putaway options that allow the target locations for putaway to be chosen by the operator with guidance from the system. We’ve also made changes to improve the display of the current stock position of the source location when doing putaways on the handheld.

Lot tracking

It is now possible to capture arbitrary lot attributes, both during the initial receipt of stock for a lot, and after the lot has been created. The definition of the lot attributes – for example, whether they are required and their data types – is fully configurable.

We’ve enhanced the mechanism for tracking the association of lots with despatched shipments containing these lots, potentially helpful in situations where a recall is required.

We’ve also updated the lot expiry dashboard, allowing the display of either actual expiry dates, or effective expiry dates (which take into account required shelf life defined for the SKU), when displaying lots that are approaching expiry.

Lot testing

We’ve recently added a new dedicated lot testing feature that allows for a QA process to be applied to stock that requires testing.

The test itself, which will occur in a dedicated area of the warehouse, involves recording arbitrary attributes against the lot (and licence plate) under test. The definition of these attributes, including their data type and whether they are required, is based on configuration. The operator will also record an overall pass or fail against the test. If a pass is recorded, the stock under test will be designated for putaway. If a fail is recorded, the operator will be given the option of flagging any related stock for testing.

The feature involves the use of a ‘test pending’ status for any stock for which testing is required, and stock move tasks to drive the picking of testable stock into the testing area.

Licence plates

Licence plates continue to play an increasingly important role in many OrderFlow configurations because of the flexibility they provide in modelling complex processes.

We’ve added a more general purpose picking capability that allows for individual stock items as well as whole licence plates to be picked in the same task.

Also new is the ability to receive orders for non-countable products (measured for example in weights or volumes) to be fulfilled via whole licence plate picks. These orders can also include lines for regular stock items, and can be routed via consolidation locations. The use of consolidation locations allows for the stock for individual order lines to be sourced via different processes on the system, rather than having to rely on a single picking tasks.

In order to facilitate these capabilities, support for licence plates has also been added to the OrderFlow processes handling picks from consolidation, handheld scan to pack, and package creation.

OrderFlow can now enforce rules that ensure certain products can only be stored in licence plates. An example of where this would apply is for liquids, where the licence plate represents a bottle. With this capability, we can enforce tracking of the amount left in the bottle as it is used, as well as the location of each bottle (via the licence plate nesting mechanism).

We’ve introduced the new concept of a licence plate ‘purpose’ that determines how it can be used in the warehouse. The idea is that the operator will scan the licence plate, and will be routed into an appropriate stock handling or putaway operation.

It is now possible to identify a licence plate via a complex GS1 label, similar to the way that we can use GS1 information to identify products and lots. The licence plate identification may be through a GS1 SSCC identifier, or an alternative data indicator.

Work orders

In recent releases we’ve added a few enhancements in the processes used for work orders and manufacturing.

We’ve added a new type of work order based on a ‘Donor Product’ relationship. This is similar to a Bill of Materials relationship, where the stock created for the output product is based purely on an inputted amount of a single ‘Donor’ product.

OrderFlow now has a new API endpoint to facilitate integration with third party industrial scales, which can measure out the actual input quantity used for work orders rather than the quantity picked. The measured quantities, together with the source licence plates and lots, can be fed back to OrderFlow for each input product. The debit of input stock that follows is based on these quantities, rather than on the system just using the quantities picked.

We’ve also added new options around how stock is picked for work orders. Previously the typical approach would involve all stock for a single work order being picked in tasks dedicated to that work order. It is now possible to allow some stock needed for work orders to be sourced from a staging area close to production, with replenishment of this area being split across multiple work orders. For certain operations, this can lead to significant reduction in the number of stock moves, as items required by multiple work orders can be picked in larger amounts to satisfy a larger overall requirement.

Waves

We’re very close to completion on a new wave feature that allows for synchronisation of operations within a warehouse to meet overall fulfilment objectives.

Without waves, operations in the warehouse can be thought of as an ongoing stream of activities, with goods received, stock moved and orders picked in continuous streams. By introducing the idea with waves, it is possible to control the throughput of operations in a more coordinated fashion.

The starting point for this capability is for each shipment to be associated with a wave. The associated picking operations that follow, whether they are batch picks, single shipment picks, replenishments, etc., will each be associated with the same wave, and will in this way be limited to satisfying the fulfilment requirements of just the shipments in the wave. For more complex processes, this can help to regulate the use of resources that would otherwise be under contention, such as staging and consolidation locations, picking trolleys, etc.

Other changes

In recent releases we’ve added a number of other minor but still noteworthy changes, which we’ve listed below:

• We’ve added a general purpose processing instruction framework, that allows for complex or time consuming operations to be executed safely in the background, without slowing down the actions that initiate these operations
• We’ve made it easier to identify the picking cart subdivision at an earlier stage when doing a handheld batch pick to subdivided cart
• We’ve made it easier to import ‘warehouse product’ entries, by allowing these to be added as part of a product import
• We’ve added a new dashboard for showing the status of API remote entries, particularly helpful in supporting some third party API integrations