Guided journey
Pick, pack and deliver
From the moment stock is reserved to the lorry leaving the gate: which units go, who picks them, and how a load is built for a site that can only take one delivery a day.
Finished windows are bulky, fragile, and delivered to sites that are still building sites. A load that arrives in the wrong order, or on a day the crane is not booked, costs more than the picking ever saved — which is why dispatch, not picking, is the expensive end of this path.
Work through it in order. Reservation decides what is promised, removal strategy decides which physical units go, picking decides how many trips your team walks, and dispatch decides whether any of that survives contact with a tower that takes one delivery a day.
By the end you will be able to
- Decide when stock is committed to an order — at confirmation, or a few days before the lorry
- Reserve by hand when a job genuinely deserves to jump the queue
- Choose which units leave first, and know when FIFO protects you and when it does not
- Pick several orders in one trip instead of walking the same aisle five times
- Run a wave pick when one site needs part of many orders on the same day
- Print the delivery slips and labels that make a load identifiable at the other end
- Build the load, schedule the dock and route the vehicle from one dispatch screen
- Charge for delivery, and invoice it, without a manual line on the order
Before you start
- A working warehouse with its operation types — "2- Setup Your Warehouse"
- Real stock and a live replenishment routine — "Keep the material flowing"
- Finished units coming out of the factory, labelled — "6- Setup Production and the Factory"
- An honest answer about your sites: whether deliveries are craned to a floor, dropped at a gate, or booked into a dock slot, because that decides most of what follows
The path
01
Decide what is promised, and when
- 01 Choose your reservation moment Reserving early guarantees a job its material and freezes stock nobody else can touch. Reserving late keeps the yard flexible and risks a shortage on the day. There is no universally right answer, only the one that suits how far ahead you sell. 4 min Decide when stock gets reserved
- 02 Commit stock at confirmation The simplest policy: a confirmed order owns its material immediately. It suits a factory that sells short-lead jobs and wants no argument about who the profile on rack four belongs to. 4 min Reserve stock at confirmation
- 03 Reserve a few days before the lorry The policy most fenestration contractors end up on: hold nothing until the delivery is near, then commit. It keeps stock available for whichever tower moves first, which on a construction programme is never the one you planned. 6 min Reserve stock a few days before delivery
- 04 Override it by hand when it matters Whatever the policy, some jobs deserve to jump: a handover date, a penalty clause, a customer standing on site. Manual reservation is the escape hatch — used deliberately and visibly, rather than by moving material off a rack. 5 min Reserve stock by hand
02
Decide which units leave first
- 05 Understand removal strategies Reservation says how much; removal strategy says which physical units. For aluminium this is not academic — two bars from different batches can differ visibly in a powder-coated finish standing side by side on an elevation. 5 min Decide which units leave first
- 06 Send the oldest stock out first FIFO is the sane default for gaskets, sealant and anything with a shelf life, and it stops a pallet ageing quietly in a corner for two years. It is also what keeps batch drift from accumulating on your racks. 5 min Pick the oldest stock first (FIFO)
- 07 Send what expires first Sealant and structural adhesive have a cure date, and using them past it is a failure that appears on a facade two years later. FEFO picks by expiry rather than by arrival, which is not the same thing. 7 min Pick what expires first (FEFO)
03
Walk the aisle once
- 08 Pick several orders in one trip Five orders needing the same gasket is five walks down the same aisle, or one. Batch picking collects them together and sorts afterwards, and on a large warehouse it is the single biggest saving on this path. 8 min Pick several orders in one trip
- 09 Run a wave for one site A wave is the other shape: part of many orders, together, because they are all going to the same tower on Thursday. It is how you load a lorry by destination rather than by paperwork. 6 min Pick part of several orders as a wave
04
Get it out the gate
- 10 Print the slips and the labels At the other end somebody unloads this onto a floor with no office. The delivery slip and the labels are the only thing telling them which crate is which — print them as part of dispatch, not as an afterthought. 9 min Print delivery slips and labels
- 11 Build the load and book the dock The dispatch screen is where fenestration logistics actually lives: build the load onto a vehicle, book the dock slot the site will accept, and route the driver. A tower that takes one delivery a day is planned here or not at all. 5 min Dispatch Management System (Fleet Load Building, Dock Scheduling & Map Routing)
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