Barcoding, labeling and scanning are all just tools, but! If used effectively, with the right WMS platform powering them, there’s no investment wellness manufacturers can make that has a quicker return on investment or further-reaching benefits.
Barcode scanners, just like barcode printers, are only as good as what’s running them. We visit several new processing operations every week and talk to countless industry folks at various events, and there’s one story that we hear consistently: We tried to use our ERP or accounting platform for barcoding, spent thousands of dollars and countless man hours trying to implement a custom solution, and eventually just gave up.
Their takeaway? That barcoding and scanning just doesn’t work for them. The correct takeaway? That the thin WMS capabilities of standard ERP solutions are designed for straightforward, basic manufacturing and can’t handle the complex processes employed by wellness manufacturers working with things like cosmetics, CBD, or nutritional supplements.
These types of manufacturing carry some of the heaviest, most specific regulations, as well as the most complicated processes. No standard WMS or ERP software can handle the complex tracing and production management requirements that they operate with. ParityWellness was built designed from the ground up to address these specific challenges, and that’s why it works.
Larger, enterprise-level businesses can request that their vendors include GS-1 labels on inbound pallets, which will dramatically expedite the receiving process. There will always be some items without existing barcodes, and when that happens you should expect that your WMS platform has the expected order quantities ready and available on the scanner.
This allows the barcode scanner, and your staff, to verify that they’ve received the right amounts and types of product. With ParityWellness, the scanner will provide your team a color-coded warning if they over or under receive. More importantly, it will warn them in the event that they:
- Attempt to scan the wrong items into a production run
- Try to add an incorrect case or pallet to an outgoing shipment
- Fail to follow FIFO, FEFO or other operational standards
How long should it take to implement? While we’ve heard stories of implementations ranging from a few months to over a year, ParityWellness is installed and ready in 90 days at most operations, up to 120 at larger plants.
Lastly, along with barcoding and scanning, ParityWellness routinely frees up 6%-8% of an operation’s man-hours. Importantly, the hours freed up tend to be in mission-crucial roles such as finance, receiving, QA/QC and so on.
Giving those hours back to your team can have a tremendous positive impact on your business. We’ve seen the results over and over again, and it’s our favorite part of implementation.