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158 CHAPTER 5 The Fulfi llment Process

delivery document becomes the pick quantity, which is the quantity needed to
be picked from storage. Once the picking is completed, the quantity picked is
automatically transferred back into the delivery document.
After picking has been completed, the materials are placed in a staging
area where they are packed appropriately. Materials are packed using a vari-
ety of shipping units such as cartons, pallets, and containers. Each shipping
unit can be packed into another shipping unit to consolidate the shipment.
Typically, GBI ships each bike in an individual box and consolidates 20 boxes
into one carton. It then packs several cartons into a pallet. Pallets are usually
too heavy to lift by hand, so the workers must use a pallet jack or a forklift to
load them into a shipping container.
Packing is diagrammed in Figure 5-35, which illustrates a delivery con-
sisting of four items or materials. Item 1 is packed into one carton, items 2
and 3 are combined and packed into one carton, and item 4 has to be split and
placed into two cartons. Two cartons are subsequently loaded onto one pallet,
and the other two cartons onto a second pallet. Finally, both pallets are placed
in a single container.

Figure 5-35: Packing options
The fi nal task in shipping is to post goods issue in the ERP system.
The goods issue indicates that the shipment has left the facility. It also results
in several outcomes, which we discuss in the next section.

Outcomes

The shipping step, which ends with the goods issue, has numerous outcomes
(see Figure 5-36). These outcomes fall into three broad categories: (1) account-
ing impacts, (2) creation of documents to record transaction data, and (3)
updates to master data and previously created documents.
Shipping is the fi rst step in the fulfi llment process that has an impact
on fi nancials. Specifi cally, the inventory accounts of the materials shipped are

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