From order to despatch: A day’s work in a commercial bakery | Part 3 of 3
As the day’s production winds down, the bakery floor looks very different from when the day began.
Ingredients have moved through production; actual output is being captured and finished goods are becoming available. But the day’s work is not complete.
Work to fulfil customer orders continues, with finished products picked and packed ready for despatch to destinations such as supermarket distribution centres, third-party storage or export markets.
The physical product needs to move quickly, and the information accompanying it must keep pace.
From production into finished stock
As products are completed, the focus shifts from manufacturing to fulfilment. What has been made now needs to be packaged, labelled and ultimately prepared for the customer.
Packaging and labelling are part of that transition. Abel supports barcode labels for raw materials and finished goods, while pallet management processes can link manufacturing completions with pallet labels and subsequent stock movements.
Importantly, the batch information captured during production continues to be useful when a product leaves the line. Finished batches remain identifiable as they move through storage, picking and despatch. Where information such as batch numbers and use-by dates has been captured, Abel’s batch tracking can support quality and recall processes further along the product lifecycle.
Together, this information helps maintain continuity between what the bakery produced and what it is preparing to send to the customer.
Getting orders ready for despatch
The customer demand that shaped production now becomes work for the warehouse team. Finished products are available, and attention turns to getting the right stock ready for each customer.
In Abel, customer orders can generate despatches automatically, giving warehouse operators the information they need to manage the work ahead. Where Abel’s mobile warehouse application is used, workers can access customer despatches from a mobile device, confirm relevant quantities and batches, and post the despatch.
For larger picking requirements, bulk picking can bring multiple despatches or stock transfers together. Picking can be organised by warehouse area, enabling different workers to contribute to the same bulk pick.
The important point is that the warehouse is not starting again with a separate set of information. The customer demand that drove production now connects with finished inventory, picking and despatch.
Preparing orders for different destinations
Not every product leaves the bakery in the same way. Local deliveries need to be coordinated with freight collections, finished goods may move to third-party storage, and export orders can bring additional pallet, container and shipping requirements.
For orders travelling further afield, Abel’s container management functionality provides additional capability. Container bookings can be recorded, customer orders associated with containers, and containers tracked while they are in progress. Once a container is ready, the relevant despatches can be produced.
Pallet management adds another layer to this process, enabling barcoded goods to be scanned onto pallets and pallets to be allocated to containers.
At this stage, the priority is knowing what is ready, where it is going and how it needs to leave the site. Keeping stock and despatch information connected helps finished goods move smoothly from the bakery to their next destination.
Connecting orders, despatch and invoicing
For bakeries using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), information can move electronically between Abel and their trading partners’ systems, reducing manual entry and helping automate the flow from order through to invoicing.
For example, an EDI-enabled supermarket order can move through the process as follows:
- Order: The incoming EDI order creates the customer order in Abel.
- Despatch: Once goods are picked and batches assigned, the despatch is prepared.
- Advance Despatch Notice: An ASN is returned through the EDI provider, telling the customer what is being shipped and what they can expect to receive.
- Invoice: Posting the despatch can create the customer invoice, which can also be sent electronically through the EDI provider.
In this way, the information accompanying the order continues to move with it from customer demand through to despatch and invoicing.
From daily activity to operational insight
As work moves through the bakery, the information captured along the way builds a more complete picture of the operation. Abel BI brings information together for reporting and analysis.
Reporting across manufacturing, inventory, sales and finance can help the bakery review information from different parts of the business and build a broader view of activity across the operation.
One connected flow
Across the three parts of this series, we have followed the connected processes that turn customer demand into production requirements and move finished goods through to despatch.
Planning and preparation turn incoming demand into work that production can act on. During production, the bakery records what happens as ingredients become finished products. From there, those products move through packing, picking and despatch on their way to the customer.
Although these activities take place in different parts of the business, they depend on one another.
For a commercial bakery operating at pace, that continuity helps each team build on the work already completed instead of reconstructing the information it needs. The activity recorded throughout the day supports planning, production and fulfilment decisions across the business.
Learn more
Explore how Abel helps food and beverage manufacturers connect customer demand, planning, production, inventory and fulfilment.
