Warehouse, Logistics & Order Fulfilment in Regulated Manufacturing — From Dock-to-Stock to Pack-&-Ship

This topic is part of the SG Systems Global regulatory & operations glossary.

Updated November 2025 • warehouse locations & bin topology, dock-to-stock, directed put-away & picking, wave & zone picking, order picking & fulfilment, pallet building, cartonization, staging & dock loading, ASN & shipping manifests, cold chain & segregation, WMS–ERP integration • Food & Beverage, Meat & Sausage, Bakery, Dietary Supplements, Pharma, Devices, Cosmetics, Chemicals

Warehouse, logistics & order fulfilment is where your quality system meets reality: pallets, totes, racks, freezers, forklifts and loading bays. You can have perfect recipes and batch records; if the wrong pallet goes on the wrong truck or a quarantined lot gets picked by mistake, you still lose.

In regulated manufacturing, the warehouse is not just a storage cost centre. It is a control point for traceability, allergen segregation, cold-chain integrity, FEFO, label and code accuracy, and recall readiness. The good news: most of the backbone is already in your glossary.

“If your WMS is a spreadsheet and your pick logic is ‘grab whatever’s closest’, you don’t have regulated logistics. You have gambling with forklifts.”

1) Warehouse locations, bins & zones — the physical backbone

Your warehouse locations & bin/zone topology and bin location management entries define the essentials:

• Locations. Building, room, aisle, rack, level, bin; sometimes mobile carriers (racks, trolleys, cages).
• Zones. Temperature zones (ambient, chilled, frozen), allergen zones, hazard zones (flammables, corrosives), quality zones (quarantine, released, blocked).
• Batch-to-bin traceability. Batch-to-bin traceability ties lots/batches to specific bins and zones, enabling precise trace and recall.

From a regulated perspective, locations and zones are part of your control strategy: where you store something matters for expiry, cross-contamination, EM, cold chain and recall reach. V5 WMS treats locations as master data, not as an afterthought.

2) Inbound, dock-to-stock & QA hold

Inbound is where materials cross from suppliers into your traceability and quality universe. Concepts:

• Goods receipt. Goods receipt creates internal lot IDs, records supplier lots, quantities, COO and basic condition, typically driven by POs from ERP.
• Dock-to-stock. Dock-to-stock measures how quickly and cleanly goods move from receiving to usable stock, including quality and lab steps.
• QA hold/release. Lots usually enter in a “quarantine” state under Hold/Release rules until COAs are verified and, where required, lab tests are complete.

In V5, inbound flows look like this:

• ERP/QuickBooks sends POs; V5 WMS uses them to validate receipts.
• Received lots are labelled (GS1-128 or internal) and put into quarantine bins via directed put-away.
• V5 QMS/LIMS handle COA and testing; when passed, lot status flips to “released” and WMS moves them to production-eligible zones.

If you can receive directly into “available” stock without QA gating, you’re playing chicken with recalls.

3) Directed put-away, zoning & cold-chain storage

Directed put-away is your antidote to “park it wherever there’s space.” In regulated warehouses, put-away has to respect:

• Zone rules. Certain items only allowed in certain zones (allergen segregation, hazard classes, raw vs RTE, QC quarantine).
• Temperature and EM constraints. Items with defined storage conditions (e.g., 2–8°C, frozen) must go where those conditions are monitored and qualified.
• Consolidation & FEFO. Keeping same-lot pallets together when sensible, and storing lots so FEFO picking is efficient.

V5 WMS calculates target locations based on these rules and directs operators via handhelds or terminals. Combined with temperature mapping and EM, this forms the backbone of your cold-chain and segregation control.

4) Directed picking, order picking & batch staging

Picks are where most warehouse mistakes happen: wrong lot, wrong product, wrong quantity, wrong status. Your glossary covers:

• Directed picking. Directed picking creates structured pick tasks that specify item, lot, bin, quantity and destination, enforcing FEFO/FIFO and QA status.
• Order picking & warehouse fulfilment. Order picking & fulfilment orchestrates picking for customer orders, production orders or transfers.

Two main pick contexts V5 handles:

• Production staging. WMS provides MES with staged lots for batches (kitting, pre-weigh, line-side staging), ensuring the right lots hit the right recipes and lines.
• Customer orders. WMS picks finished goods (with lots & serials) for shipments, respecting FEFO, blocks, contract rules and customer-specific labelling/coding requirements.

Barcode scanning at pick and confirm is non-negotiable: you want the system to scream when the wrong lot leaves the bin, not when a complaint arrives six weeks later.

5) Wave picking, zone picking & workload balancing

Your glossary includes advanced picking methods:

• Wave picking. Wave picking groups orders into waves based on criteria (route, carrier, time window, zone) to optimise travel and loading.
• Zone picking. Zone picking assigns pickers to specific zones; orders traverse zones, accumulating items.

In regulated operations, wave/zone picking must still respect:

• Lot traceability and status (no mixing blocked lots into waves).
• Allergen and hazard segregation rules.
• Cold-chain constraints (minimising warm-time for chilled/frozen goods).

V5 WMS can generate waves and zone picks that embed these constraints, with scan validation at each step. For smaller plants, the same logic can be used for simpler “cluster picking” patterns without over-complication.

6) Pallet building, cartonization & unit-load creation

How you group units and cases onto pallets matters for traceability, damage reduction and logistics cost. Your glossaries include:

• Pallet building / unit-load creation. Pallet building describes how cases are combined into pallets for storage and shipping.
• Cartonization & right-size packing. Cartonization describes how units are assigned to cases and cartons to minimise void, damage and freight cost.

Regulated twists:

• Cases and pallets must carry correct GTIN, lot and—in some sectors—serial & SSCC codes.
• Aggregation (unit → case → pallet) must be recorded for traceability and, when relevant, EPCIS/serialisation.
• Mixed-lot pallets may be allowed or banned depending on customer/retailer rules and recall strategy.

V5 uses pallet-building and cartonization logic plus label templates to ensure physical units, codes and WMS data all match up.

7) Outbound staging, loading, ASN & shipping documents

At shipping, the focus shifts to carrier interfaces and customer visibility. Your entries:

• Dock loading & outbound staging. Dock loading & outbound staging ensure pallets are staged correctly by route/stop and loaded onto the right trailers.
• Advance Shipping Notice (ASN). ASN messages describe shipment contents (SSCCs, GTINs, lots, quantities) to customers ahead of arrival.
• Shipping manifest & Bill of Lading (BOL). Shipping manifest and BOL documents provide the legal and operational summary for carrier handover.

V5 WMS stitches this together:

• Allocates and confirms pallets (with lots/serials) to shipments and loads.
• Generates ASNs and manifests so customers and 3PLs know what to expect.
• Ensures that only released lots are shipped, and that recall-critical data (lots, serials, dates) are embedded in documentation for later trace.

If you can’t reconstruct exactly what was on a given truck from system data alone, your recall and dispute footing is weak.

8) ERP/WMS integration — who owns what

Your ERP and WMS glossaries make the division clear:

• ERP. Owns POs, SOs, customers, suppliers, item masters, financial inventory and invoicing.
• WMS (V5). Owns bin-level inventory, lot & status, movements, picks, staging, palletisation and warehouse-specific processes.

Integration pattern via V5 Connect:

• ERP → V5: POs, SOs, item updates, customer requirements (e.g., labelling rules).
• V5 → ERP: goods receipts by item & site, shipments by item & site, inventory adjustments, maybe summarised WIP.

This lets V5 enforce the messy details of regulated warehousing while ERP remains the financial system of record—not an over-customised pseudo-WMS.

9) How V5 Traceability makes warehouse & logistics “regulation-proof”

V5 Traceability brings regulated logic directly into warehouse operations:

• Lot & status-aware WMS. FEFO, QA status, allergen zones, hazard classes and cold-chain rules are baked into put-away, picking and staging logic.
• Scan-enforced operations. Barcodes (GS1-128, SSCC, internal IDs) are scanned at key steps; wrong lot or wrong location attempts are blocked.
• Traceability-ready shipments. Shipments are built from lots, pallets and cases that are fully known to the system, ready for recalls and EPCIS/DSCSA/UDI reporting.
• Integration with MES & QMS. WMS status and movements are visible to MES (for staging, consumption) and QMS (for deviations, CAPA, audits, recalls).
• Multisite consistency. Using V5 across warehouses means you can standardise rules and reports while still respecting local physical realities.

Result: your warehouses become extensions of your quality and traceability systems, not risky black boxes at the edge of the plant.

FAQ — Warehouse, Logistics & Order Fulfilment in Regulated Manufacturing

Q1. Can’t ERP alone handle our warehouse? Why bother with WMS?
ERP can track inventory at a coarse level (item and site), but it typically struggles with bin-level control, FEFO, lot status, complex picking methods and real-time scan enforcement. In regulated environments, those details matter for traceability, segregation and recall readiness. WMS like V5 fills that gap and then reconciles back to ERP.

Q2. How strict should we be about picking from correct lots vs “any in spec”?
For traceability and FEFO, you must control which lots are picked. Letting operators choose “any in spec” from memory breaks lot genealogy and FEFO logic. Directed picking with scan validation ensures you know exactly which lot served which batch or order—critical for recalls, CPV and SQM.

Q3. Do wave and zone picking make sense for smaller plants?
They can, but they’re not mandatory. Smaller plants can often achieve good performance with simple directed picks and cluster picking. Wave/zone picking become more valuable as order volume, SKU count and warehouse size grow. The important piece is that whatever picking method you use is enforced and traceable, not ad-hoc.

Q4. How does warehouse design interact with allergen and hazard control?
Zones and bin topology define where certain classes of product are allowed. Allergen and hazard attributes from the ingredient/product master must be mapped to those zones. V5 can then enforce “no put-away” and “no pick” rules when movements would violate segregation. Physical design (racking, barriers, airflows) and system rules must support each other.

Q5. What’s the minimum viable setup for regulated WMS?
At minimum: defined locations and zones; lot-level inventory with QA status; directed put-away and picking with barcode validation; basic batch-to-bin traceability; and clean integration to ERP for PO/SO and financial inventory. V5 can deliver this without turning the warehouse into a science project.

Q6. Where should we start if our warehouse is currently run on paper and Excel?
Start by mapping locations and defining zones. Introduce lot-level labels and simple scanning at goods receipt and picking, with V5 WMS as the system of record. Then layer in directed put-away/picking, QA status controls and basic ASN/manifest generation. Once accuracy and traceability improve, you can add more advanced features like wave/zone picking and pallet-building logic.

Related Reading (Glossary)
• Warehouse Foundations: Warehouse Locations & Bin/Zone Topology | Bin Location Management | Batch-to-Bin Traceability
• Inbound & Storage: Goods Receipt | Dock-to-Stock | Directed Put-Away | Hold/Release
• Picking & Fulfilment: Directed Picking | Order Picking & Warehouse Fulfilment | Wave Picking | Zone Picking | Pallet Building / Unit-Load Creation | Cartonization & Right-Size Packing
• Outbound & Docs: Dock Loading & Outbound Staging | Advance Shipping Notice (ASN) | Shipping Manifest | Bill of Lading (BOL)
• Systems & V5: Warehouse Management System (WMS) | ERP | V5 Solution Overview | V5 WMS | V5 Connect API