Returns management is an indispensable part of supply chain for most industries. Returns come back for many reasons. For example in publishing, distributors are allowed to return back their unsold inventory within the permissible percentage of their annual purchase. In other industries like ecommerce, customers return back damage items or items they don’t need any more. Accordingly the volume of returns may vary from less than 1 % to as high as 25 % of sales.
What is the best method to deal with returns? How can losses associated with returned products be minimized? These are some of the associated questions which any company focused on supply chain optimization and improving profitability must ask.
Economies of scale reduce costs and that is probably one of the main reasons companies outsource their supply chains to a specialized third party. The same economies can help improve returns management if applied innovatively.
AAJ has taken a step by creating a new returns management system to benefit its clients. The system would manage a ’multi-client ‘, facility dedicated for just returns processing. Some of the highlight worthy benefits it has offered:
- Reduce the TAT of returns credit issuance to less than 2 days within receipt.
- Consolidation of same item received in multiple returns according to the item pack size.
- Reducing the overload on the FGI warehouse storage having to deal with small quantities of same SKU across multiple returns.
- Reduction in pickup cost by consolidating returns pick up of multiple client.
- 3 step quality check with the same resources required for single step quality check in the traditional set up.
The new Return Management Software by AAJ may just be beginning to expose the many benefits of ‘consolidated returns processing ‘ in third party supply chain management.
Innovation in supply chain is not only about investment in new machines and gadgets and AAJ’s ‘Innovation Focused ‘ team has proved that yet again.
AAJ Supply Chain Management
