What is Staging?
Staging is a process used to manually pick up products or shipments and place them in separate consolidated areas for inspection. This process is used in docks, warehouses, and every holding unit that requires consolidation and review. As the assessment is carried out against a sales invoice, one can identify a product shortfall and even come across a damaged product.
Significance of Staging in E-commerce Shipping and Delivery
Staging allows companies to utilize their warehouse space efficiently and streamlines the shipping process. Some of the advantages of staging include:
- Identifying missing products and shortfalls: In staging, products are initially placed in a rack-free zone to be transported to designated positions. Here, the quantity and product details are matched per sales invoice. A handler can identify a missing package or a shortfall in the shipped quantity.
- Damaged products: Products tend to incur damage during shipping. A manual inspection allows a company to identify such an instance. By staging, a company categorizes shipments in a specific order. It will enable a shipping company to recognize a damaged product and track its seller quickly.
Prerequisites of Staging and How It Works
Staging is used in various phases of a transit cycle as a process is invoked during the inflow and the outflow of a product, which serves as its only requirement.
- For inbound flow: The receiving party acquires the shipment, categorizes them as per a specific metric, and inspects them per the received sales invoice.
- For an outbound flow: The dispatching party receives a delivery order (D/O) from the shipping company. They subsequently collect the products, categorize and inspect them before disbursal.
Use Case with Staging
A warehouse in Sydney receives a shipment containing 3,000 units of women’s sandals and 3,000 units of men’s sneakers. On delivery, they consolidate the products as per the product type and manually inspect them alongside the sales order, which the merchant handed down.
