Inbound deliveries
An inbound delivery is a provision of stock from a supplier that is received into a factory. Inbound deliveries can be created manually but are primarily downloaded from an ERP system.
Inbound deliveries are used to track deliveries of material arriving from suppliers into the factory. A delivery record in MES defines the supplier it is coming from, which warehouse it is due to arrive at, and when it is expected. The delivery has a status, being one of:
- Unplanned
- Only top-level details of the delivery are known at this point (not visible to operators receiving deliveries).
- Planned
- Delivery is planned for a date and ready to be received once it arrives.
- In progress
- The delivery is currently being received into the factory.
- Complete
- The delivery has been fully received.
- Canceled
- The delivery has been canceled and will not arrive.
- On hold
- The inventory on the delivery requires further action before the delivery can be progressed and received, such as a quality check or sorting operation.
Additional fields, such as a delivery vehicle identifier, are available on the delivery record. Delivery items associated with the delivery describe the total expected quantity of each material.
Inbound inventory packs against each delivery item can be recorded with details of each of the expected packages on the delivery, which might hold the supplier pack details, such as batch number, individual package identifier, etc., in advance of the delivery arriving.
Inbound inventory packs can be assigned unique identifiers based on an inventory pack template, if needed. For each pack, a default location can be set. This is used to set the location of received inventory when unloading the entire delivery or to default the location of received inventory when performing individual pack receipts.
Deliveries can be associated with a purchase order to track the remaining amount of material requested as a whole from the supplier.