ACT Fulfillment Blog

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has become the backbone for high-volume warehouse fulfillment and inventory management.  The 900-series EDI transaction sets, such as EDI 940, 943, and 945, establish automated communication…

TL;DR Milk run logistics uses one truck on a planned, recurring route to make several pickups or deliveries, instead of sending a separate shipment to each location. For suppliers selling…

TL;DR Retailer chargebacks are deductions a retailer takes from a supplier’s payment when a shipment breaks its routing guide, labeling, EDI, or delivery rules. Most trace back to a few…

TL;DR Dedicated warehousing reserves a building, or a defined part of one, for a single shipper, with its own labor, equipment, and processes, usually under a multi-year agreement. Shared warehousing,…

TL;DR Devanning (also called container stripping or destuffing) is unloading a container at its destination. Floor-loaded containers are unloaded by hand and palletized on the dock, which takes far more…

TL;DR Choosing a 3PL comes down to matching a provider’s services, technology, and industry experience to how your business actually runs and where it is heading, rather than picking on…

TL;DR Contract logistics is the long-term, contract-based outsourcing of your logistics operations to a provider that dedicates resources and tailors its processes to your business, managing the flow of goods…

TL;DR Retail fulfillment is the process of getting a brand’s products onto retailers’ shelves and to shoppers, spanning bulk shipments into retailers’ distribution centers, direct-to-consumer orders, and omnichannel demand. What…

TL;DR Kitting and assembly are value-added fulfillment services that combine separate items: kitting bundles finished products under one new SKU while keeping them separable, and assembly permanently joins components into…

TL;DR Pick and pack is the warehouse process of retrieving the individual items in a customer’s order (picking) and preparing them in sealed, labeled packaging for shipment (packing), rather than…

TL;DR Ecommerce fulfillment is the end-to-end process of receiving, storing, processing, picking, packing, shipping, and returning online orders, covering everything between a customer’s checkout and the package at their door.…

TL;DR 3PL logistics is the practice of outsourcing warehousing, order fulfillment, transportation, inventory management, and returns to a specialist provider that runs those operations at scale. A 3PL handles the…