Transload & DC By Pass
Maximize Utilization of Domestic Trailers With FMI!

As sourcing continues to move off shore to Asia, many importers are seeing the tremendous advantages of transloading cargo on the West Coast for distribution to either East Coast DC's, customers, or direct-to-store. FMI has made substantial investments in automated material handling equipment so that these economies can achieved through the transloading of cargo. Here's how it works:

Receiving - Inbound containers are tracked and reported to FMI via Advanced Ship Notices (ASN), usually in the form of an EDI-856 protocol. This gives advance warning to FMI for workload planning.

Labeling - Every carton that is processed into the facility is assigned a unique barcode label, and are applied to the carton during the receipt process. This license plate number (LPN) is critical to the operation of this process. Vendor purchase order, SKU, and quantities are just some of the information supplied in this LPN.

Processing - For product that has a pre-assigned allocation in full case quantities, FMI can cross-dock this freight, print and apply an outbound shipping label, feed the cartons to the high-speed carton sorter, and route to an outbound truck. This process can be accomplished in less than 10 minutes!

For product that does not have a pre-assigned allocation, cartons are inducted into the system, LPN's are created and applied to the cartons, the LPN is read via a scanner and a lane is assigned to the individual carton. At the induction of the shipping sorter, the label is read again and delivered to one of the outbound doors. For example, if a store is allocated 40 units and there are 24 units to a carton, one carton will be diverted for that store for full case distribution and the other cartons will be diverted to other stores based on assigned allocations.

There are substantial savings in time and money by utilizing any one of these practices. All it takes is some planning and review with your FMI sales representative. Let us show you how we are eliminating distribution costs for our customers, especially in the areas receipt, put-away and order picking.