IDS Quality Assurance

As a 3PL (third-party logistics) fulfillment services provider, IDS commits to high standards in handling your products. Why? Because our working partnership with your business directly reflects on our company brand and reputation. We become an extension of your team and resources. We rely on you to ensure your products are of the highest quality and meet your customers’ expectations. You can count on IDS to monitor for quality at every touchpoint where we handle products passing through our facilities to consumers, distributors, or retailers.

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Quality Assurance in Fulfillment Centers

In today’s data-driven world, quality assurance at fulfillment centers is about robust technology in superior software. At IDS, we are proud to use one of the best enterprise-level warehouse management system (WMS) solutions available today. Quality assurance is tracked every step of the way in our warehousing and order fulfillment process. IDS trains every employee to understand the critical importance of a quality assurance mindset, which means you can rest easy knowing that quality is at the forefront of everything we do. We give our customers real-time visibility into what’s happening with your products all along the way.

Fulfillment Practices Matter: Quality Assurance Practices

From the moment your products are on their way to an IDS fulfillment center, we’re already tracking them and will continue to do so throughout the rest of their supply chain journey. Here are the key quality assurance touchpoints we track:

Pre-Receiving and Receiving

With direct-to-system data capture, inventory life cycle planning is underway before your products arrive at an IDS receiving dock. We support both ASN (advanced shipping notice) and EDI (electronic data interchange). Whether it’s planned or unplanned receipt, we’re always ready with real-time bar-coding, RFID, and mobile scanners.

Putaway

IDS supports directed and on-demand stock storage in the warehouses at our fulfillment centers. By leveraging inventory demand and requirements data, we intelligently lead the movement of products along optimal travel paths to reduce non-productive travel time and decrease inventory touches. We also efficiently manage both planned and unplanned returns, including RMA (return merchandise authorizations), RGA (return goods authorizations), and RA (return authorizations). Efficiency in these systems is how IDS provides maximum value to every customer.

Order Management

Our warehouse managers (and you) have real-time visibility into pending work so they can sort and allocate tasks for optimal workflow and continuous monitoring of picking progress. Managers quickly identify and group orders needing immediate attention and direct order release, warehouse floor work organization, and picking assignments. When item demand exceeds the quantity available, managers receive an instant notification for prompt exception handling.

Picking and Packing

As fulfillment shifts into the outbound focus, IDS is constantly streamlining picking and packing processes, reducing order cycle fulfillment times, and minimizing errors. With a range of system-validated picking options, we quickly determine the optimal pick sequence and picker routing to reduce non-productive travel time. Visual dashboards give managers real-time visibility into order/wave status, pending work, and employee productivity. Our tools grant total control over order packing and provide pack verifications to bypass manual checking against packing lists.

Shipping

With all your shipping requirements in our systems, IDS offers automated generation of industry-compliant shipping documents and labels. This automation helps you standardize and stabilize the shipping process in your facilities and manage communications between your warehouse and shipping carriers. These improved efficiencies enable shipping associates to focus on moving products without getting bogged down in time-consuming data entry.

Work Center

IDS provides real-time visibility into all of your inventory. Our system’s dynamic view of inventory allows warehouse managers to track multi-level bills of material (BOMs), including subcomponents and finished goods at all levels of piece, case, pallet, and job. Given the array of value-added services IDS can provide, our systems fully support prebuilt and on-demand kitting, assembly, disassembly, and repacking; relabeling; retail displays; and personalization and customization options.

Inventory Management

Continuous, real-time visibility and control over inventory quantity, status, and location are essential to efficiency and cost savings. Our systems leverage built-in business logic, algorithms, and configurable settings to quickly determine the most efficient, cost-effective placement and movement of inventory through our facilities. From lot control and serialization to supporting FEFO (first expiry, first out) and FIFO (first in, first out) removal strategies, automatic triggers drive primary pick replenishments, segregation of inventory according to ABC analysis, assignment of cycle counting, and the management of physical inventory counts.

Labor Management

In a fulfillment center operation like IDS, management protocols and procedures ensure active engagement, monitoring, and measuring team member performance. These protocols drive the optimal distribution of work through interactive dashboards and robust, real-time labor analytics. As demand requirements change, our managers quickly alert workers to redirect staff, materials, and equipment. Employee accountability is a key framework at IDS, aided by audit trails reporting who packed each order, when it was packed, and the contents of each container. We leverage this visibility to evaluate and improve our processes constantly.

IDS Commitment to Quality Assurance Standards

When choosing a 3PL partner for outsourcing order fulfillment and other supply-chain management services, you want to know what kinds of quality assurance standards a provider holds itself accountable with documented evidence of compliance. At IDS, we document our commitment to quality assurance through the following:

Quality management system based on lean processes
Six Sigman practices
Kaizen 5S practices
Documented standard operating procedures (SOPs)
Service level agreement (SLA) adherence, transparency, and accountability
PCI compliance
GMP adherence

IDS Fulfillment: A 3PL Partner with Your Best Interests in Mind

Process-driven fulfillment expertise and value-added services set IDS apart in the third-party logistics and fulfillment industry. We invite you to explore the IDS Advantage and what we can do for you as your trusted 3PL partner. Feel free to reach out to us at any time through the Contact page of our website, by calling us directly at 866-232-6533, or by filling in our request a free quote form.