Let's have a look at a so-called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP / ECC) application and the way it typically handles the Goods-In process. Now ERP systems were designed to handle multiple facilities, multiple warehouses per site, multiple departments in the goods-in process etc. This makes the process far more complicated as it has to cater for the distribution of the process over multiple departments and their interaction. The warehouse would typically not be informed of the consignment. Typically the goods will go through "Goods Received", "Quality Control", "Supplier Payment Control", "Internal Distribution" and then the selected warehouse, who will again typically receive their items unannounced and unplanned. But then, the process is standardized for large corporations and not for single standalone warehouses. Each of the departments will book and process their data in the central database adding information to and changing the status of the "Goods-In Order Items". Actually moving the items into the warehouse is at the end of the goods-in chain.

Optimizing the storage locations is then typically done manually, if at all. The item may have a turnover classification as A, B or C and the warehouse grouped into A B and C zones or areas. The ERP system will usually select the first empty storage slot it finds for the storage container type (eg. box or palette) and create a transport order position for each storage container. The rest of the process consists of moving the storage container and confirming completion of the transport order position.

For a pure Standalone Warehouse Application, this is clearly a lot of unnecessary effort for a non optimized result.