Warehouse Bin Locations, Putaway and Picking: Setting It Up in ERP

A warehouse manager goes on leave and picking slows to a crawl. Orders are late, the same items are searched for twice, and a pallet received last week cannot be found. Nothing is wrong with the stock count at warehouse level. What is missing is the address: nobody wrote down where each item actually sits.

For a subsidiary of a foreign group, this problem is easy to miss because the group system shows stock by site, and the site total looks fine. This guide explains how bin locations, putaway and picking are set up in ERP, step by step, and where the setup usually goes wrong.

Why is stock by warehouse not enough?

Stock by warehouse tells you that 400 units exist somewhere in the building. It does not tell the picker where to walk. In a small storeroom this is tolerable. Once a site holds several hundred items, or several rooms and racks, the gap shows up as three costs:

• Search time. Pickers spend working hours looking for items instead of moving them.
• Dependence on people. Knowledge of the layout sits in one or two heads, so an absence or a resignation stops the operation.
• Count disputes. When a count variance appears, nobody can say which shelf it came from, so the whole site has to be recounted.

A bin address (for example zone, aisle, rack, level, position) turns "somewhere in the warehouse" into a precise place that a system and a new employee can both follow.

How should bin addresses be designed?

Keep the code short, readable and fixed. A common pattern is zone, aisle, rack, level and position, such as A-03-02-1. A few design rules save trouble later:

• Use one coding pattern across all sites, so a transfer between sites does not require translating addresses.
• Print the code on the rack as a label, with a barcode, in the same format the ERP stores.
• Separate special areas as their own locations: receiving, quality hold, returns, damaged goods and shipping staging. Stock in these areas should be visible in the system but not available for sale.
• Do not encode meaning that changes. If the code includes the product family, a reorganization will force relabeling.

What is putaway, and how do rules help?

Putaway is the step between goods receipt and the shelf. Without rules, the receiving operator puts the goods wherever there is space and tells nobody. With rules, the ERP suggests a destination when the receipt is posted.

Typical putaway rules are:

Rule	Example
Fixed location per item	Fast-moving items always go to the pick face near the dispatch door
Product group zone	Chemicals to a separate area, bulky goods to floor racks
Capacity check	The suggested bin must have room for the quantity received
Lot or expiry control	Items with expiry dates are placed so that older lots are reachable first

The operator confirms or changes the suggestion by scanning the bin label. The scan matters more than the suggestion: it is what keeps the system address and the physical address identical.

How does the pick list get built?

A pick list is the ERP's instruction to the picker: what to take, how many, from which bin, in which order. Three choices shape its quality:

1. Pick order. Sorting lines by bin address gives a walking route instead of a list in order-line sequence. Even simple sorting by zone and aisle reduces walking noticeably.
2. Batching. Several small orders can be picked in one trip, then separated at a packing point. This suits operations with many single-line orders.
3. Allocation rule. If an item sits in two bins, the system must know which one to empty first. The usual rules are oldest first (FIFO), nearest expiry first, or smallest quantity first to free up bins.

If an item is short at the allocated bin, the picker should report it on the handheld terminal, and the system should offer the next bin that holds the item. Without this step, pickers improvise and addresses drift.

How do you keep addresses accurate over time?

Addresses decay unless the process protects them. Four habits keep them clean:

• Every movement, including internal moves between bins, is posted by scan. A pallet moved without a scan is the single most common cause of "missing" stock.
• Cycle counts are done by bin, not by item. Counting one aisle per day finds errors while they are small. Our guide on cycle counting describes this routine.
• Empty bins are checked as carefully as full ones. A bin that the system shows as empty but contains goods is a classic source of double storage.
• Layout changes are made in the ERP first, then on the floor, never the other way around.

What should a foreign-owned operation check first?

Subsidiaries often inherit a group process designed for a larger, more automated site. Before copying it, check these points:

• Whether the group's coding pattern fits the actual racking at the Turkish site, or needs a local variant that maps to the group's codes.
• Whether the local team can run the process on handheld terminals, in Turkish, without relying on printed lists.
• Whether goods in transit, quality hold and returns are visible as separate locations, so that reports to the parent show available stock rather than total stock.
• Whether delivery notes and invoices are generated from the same picked quantities, so the physical shipment and the document always agree. For the electronic delivery note side, see our guide on e-irsaliye and confirm current requirements with your financial advisor.

How does Birasyo handle this?

In Birasyo, bin addressing, putaway and picking sit inside the Warehouse module, linked to Inventory:

• Warehouses, locations and shelf-level addresses are defined with no limit on the number of warehouses.
• Goods receipt, dispatch, warehouse transfer and counting can be done from Android handheld terminals, or from standard Android phones and tablets using the camera as a barcode scanner. Bluetooth or USB scanners and thermal label printers can be connected.
• Lot, serial number and expiry tracking is available, with FIFO and LIFO handling for lot-controlled items.
• Periodic and interim counts produce a count variance report, which can be run location by location.

The result is that the address of every item is a system record, not a person's memory.

Summary

• Stock by warehouse does not tell a picker where to walk; bin addresses do.
• Use a short, fixed, consistent address code, label the racks with matching barcodes, and keep receiving, quality hold, returns and staging as separate locations.
• Putaway rules suggest the destination at goods receipt; the scan at the bin keeps system and physical addresses identical.
• Pick lists sorted by address, batched where suitable, and allocated by a clear rule (FIFO, expiry or smallest quantity) shorten walking and prevent improvisation.
• Accuracy depends on scanning every movement, counting by bin and changing the layout in the ERP first.
• A subsidiary should adapt the group's process to its own racking, language and reporting needs before copying it.

If you would like to see how a bin-level setup would look with your own layout, you can arrange a conversation through the demo request page.

Sources

Process guidance is based on the Birasyo Warehouse and Inventory module descriptions and standard warehouse practice. No tax or legal figures are stated; confirm any local documentation requirements with your financial advisor.

Related articles:

• Cycle Counting and Inventory Accuracy in a Turkish Subsidiary
• Multi-Branch, Multi-Warehouse Operations in Turkish Subsidiaries
• Batch and Serial Traceability in Turkish Food Manufacturing