Dimensional Weight Shipping Part 4: Combat Dimensional Weight Shipping with Today’s Top Tools 2014

Dimensional Weight Shipping Savings In the fast paced world of supply chain/logistics, it is essential to continually reevaluate your business’ technology strategy to ensure that the needs of your customers are met while keeping costs low. The recent trend of major carriers’ implementation of dimensional rate shipping rates provides a great opportunity for you to examine state of the art technology tools to help keep costs in line. There are four top tools that will be sure to lower the financial impact of dimensional weight shipping on your business. These tools are: an inventory management system, shipment manifesting system ,automated package dimensioner and cartonization software. A robust and easy to use inventory management system is a top cost saving tool for your business. Order and shipping information can be recorded, stored and transmitted all from one location. This increases facility efficiency, reducing the labor hours needed to process, prepare and bill for orders. If used alone or in conjunction with your inventory management system, shipping manifest software will increase the accuracy of customer billing and reduce order processing time. When precise package dimensions are entered a more accurate shipping price is estimated, reducing charge back fees to your business. The system allows you to bill your customers for actual shipping costs rather than absorb the upcoming rate increases. The purpose of a package dimensioner is to automate the measurement of packages to ensure accurate and consistent measurement and eliminate potential human error. The measurement data can be transferred automatically to your manifesting or inventory management system. Many types of dimensioners are available and it is important to evaluate all of the options to ensure you make the best decision for your business. Cartonization software is an automated system which determines the best packaging option based on the components being shipped. Using cartonization software provides many cost saving opportunities including the reduction of packing materials, the elimination of unnecessary packaging sizes in your inventory, reduction of large package fees from your carriers and elimination of wasted space.