| ASN structure... Pick and Pack or Standard Pack |
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| Written by Marlow Atticus | |
| Monday, 18 February 2008 | |
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There is growing interest from companies to look into using the ASN. There appears to be greatest interest in the Grocery industry. As I work with those companies that will be receiving shipments with the ASN data to go along with it, I'm asked by quite a few, "When would Standard Pack be used over Pick and Pack ASN structure?"
For those readers now in the design stage of using the ASN 856 transactions, let me first give an overview on the difference of the structures -
General overview The ASN, of course, is the transaction used to report what is being shipped, when shipped, by whom, and most importantly the ID's of the shipable unit. In most cases, this is the ID assigned to a pallet or Carton on a shipment. Companies want these ID's in order to facilitate receiving the shipment and assisting in the put-away, or internal routing of these units. All ASN's pretty much have the same structure at the top levels of the 856 data; Shipment and Order. Where they differ is in how the ID's are reported; either the carton/Tare, or at the item level. Standard Pack This particular model is used when all trading partners will be shipping a single SKU within a given carton. Items like televisions and other large items would be candidates for this type of ASN structure. With this structure, trading partners will indicate the item being shipped, then each of the ID's of the shipable unit containing that item within the Pack or Tare level, repeating the HL loop for each. Pick and Pack Pick and Pack structure is traditionally identified in the following ways:
This structure is used to support multiple products (SKU) within the same carton. Thus the Hierarchical structure would indicate the ID of the Tare and/or Pack but would repeat the item HL loop for each new SKU in the shipping unit. In looking at the mix of products your company may purchase from your supplier base, I would guess that most have products that are large, that would be supported by Standard Pack, but also have items small enough that multiple products can be included in the same "Master" carton. So back to the question, "which should I use or should I support both." The answer to this question would be based on considering your trading partners' interest in doing ASN with you (likely sending 856's to others). In my experience, I see that 80% of the Retailers using ASN's support Pick and Pack only. Of the remaining 20%, half support only Standard pack and the other support both. If you only want to support one map to your WMS system, I would agree with the 80% to do only Pick and Pack. Where Standard pack is the best for supporting the data at an item level with repeating lists of Carton/Pallet ID's, the Pick and Pack structure does support a single item within the Carton/Pallet... there is just one SKU included. Standard Pack is not able to support multiple Items within the same shipable unit. And again, most retailers have a mix of small and large product sizes, so doing only Standard from a retailer perspective is strongly discouraged. You're likely going to have to add Pick and Pack maps at some point. I would recommend that you work with your trading partners as you work on building out your ASN program. Collaboration between Trading Partners is the best way to ensure success of the program. Marlow Atticus.. | |