Best Just-in-Time order management app

dvaillancourt
Visitor
1 0 0

Hi all, 

 

We're a tire and wheel online business that has been around for the past 12 years using Magento as our main Ecommerce/OMS platform, but we're about to make a change to Shopify as our ecommerce platform. 

 

We decided to go with Akeneo as our PIM to manage all of our products to be pushed to Shopify, but we're now looking for a platform/app that will act as our OMS and (ideally) WMS platform. We've analyzed and discovered many different options and systems that gave us a few hints of what we could find and what we are looking for, but the same "problem" comes back every time:

 

We do not stock anything in our warehouse!! All of these platforms and apps are offering a great solution and great features for companies dealing and managing huge inventories, but that is not our case! Out of the 150 000 SKU's offered on our website (and soon many many more as we will integrate car parts to the website), we only have maybe 100 SKU's in our warehouse, in quite small quantities (probably never more than 300 units of the same SKU), and this is only for a few weeks/months during our peak seasons (Fall and Spring) as most of these items are returned to our suppliers. 

 

The way we work is that every time we receive an order on the website, we take the items in the order and look at our suppliers' warehouses (we deal with over 20 suppliers and each supplier can have many warehouses, sometimes up to 25 warehouses for 1 supplier) and order them for that supplier via a B2B platform. 

 

Most of the time (60% of the time maybe), when the supplier and the warehouse we order the items from allow it, the items will be dropshipped from that warehouse. The rest of the time, the items have to come to our warehouse for a "cross-dock" process, meaning the items are ready to leave as soon as they arrive, or they will have to go through the assembly line for the mounting and balancing we perform before packaging and shipping the order out. Therefore, an order with 4 different product lines and a quantity of 4x by line (16 items in total), will all be assembled together and come out as only 4 packages to be shipped, i.e. 4 tires and wheels mounted and balanced together, so we only need 4 shipping labels, and not 16 as the original number of items when the order comes in. 

 

So far, we've seen many great systems answering some of our needs, but nothing really fully satisfying our Just-in-Time order process as well as our dynamic assembly (not pre-made bundles) process.

Are we that unique?? Any help would be appreciated!! 🙂 

Replies 2 (2)

nildeep
Excursionist
17 1 1

Hi,

A quite straightforward explanation of requirements and workflow. I have a suggestion of an open-source ERP platform named Odoo for your OMS and WMS with built-in Drop Shiping/Cross shipping features. I believe Odoo will fit perfectly your need for your entire business process. Business can be managed completely within every dept. including sales/purchase management, Delivery, Warehouse, Marketing, accounting, etc through Odoo, and the best thing is all these actions are done on a Single database.

You can get more knowledge about Odoo inventory and check on all features including WMS and dropshipping/cross shipping and packaging functionalities from Odoo-Inventory-Features.

It is easy to customize Odoo and integrate with Shopify so that you can get Just-in-Time processing as per your needs. You can handle your Shopify storefront and manage in-house procedures of OMS/WMS/ 3pl shipping/accounting from Odoo ERP. To know more about that functionality, you can visit Integration of Shopify with Odoo inventory.

Let me know if you want more help on this.

Thanks.

kingstore
Shopify Partner
175 5 31

This isn't a super unique situation but it does require a more advanced system to be able to handle the request. After the orders are placed with your supplier and assuming they are not drop-shipped, the way it will work is that the product will be marked as on-demand, which will hold the order until the inventory is checked into your warehouse. At which point, the order can be 'kitted' up by transforming the two items (car wheel, and tire), into one, and finally the order will be activated (since this item is still waiting in the on-demand queue) so it can be fulfilled with one shipping label. 

Step One Create Kits for the Wheel/Tire Final Product

kingstore_0-1632445523008.png

Step Two Receive the Separate Inventory to Your Warehouse, Fulfill Single Wheel or Tire Orders Directly from Check-In

kingstore_1-1632445846174.png

Kit Up the Wheel's and Tires from Regular Inventory or Just-In-Time Inventory

kingstore_3-1632448710119.png

 

Fulfill the Order With Full Kit or Individual Parts

kingstore_2-1632448518232.png

That's it, from here you will be able to produce shipping labels directly within SKUSavvy which will update the customer on their order. 

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