How to Maintain FIFO (First In First Out) Practice in Manufacturing Industry

Published: January 22, 2025

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In our previous blog titled “The Crucial Role of FIFO in Tin Can Manufacturing“, we highlighted several reasons that make FIFO practice critical for Tin Can manufacturers

Let’s look at the best practices that Anupam Products Limited, a manufacturer of Tin Containers follows to ensure that the Tin Cans produced first reach the filling lines first.

Bundle Labeling with Date and Batch Information

We stack Tin Cans in sets of 12, 18, 24, 36, and so on. These cans are packed using flexible packaging. The packing team pastes a label on every bundle with several pieces of information, including the brand name, date of manufacturing, and the bundle number. This way, a Date & Batch Stamp is put on every bundle. After the shift ends, the packing team passes this information to Anupam’s ERP system.

Using Information Tech to Store, Manage & Track Bundles

Once the information about the bundle is fed into Anupam Products’ ERP System, it appends the quantity and sorts it according to the brand, date, and batch number. Thereafter, it assigns a storage location to the bundle. On receiving instructions from ERP, the packing team transfers the bundles and places them in the storage bay according to the store digital mapping. This allows our ERP to report the current stock with its age and storage location. At any point in time, we can know what the oldest bundle of Tin Can of any specific brand or size is available with us, which is key information for practicing FIFO.

Digital Mapping of Storage Location

Anupam Products has around Twenty Thousand square feet of storage space at its manufacturing unit. The entire storage is divided into bays and cells. Each bay is dedicated to one customer. Bay is further divided into cells to bifurcate brands. The entire storage is mapped into ERP. The placement of goods and dispatch of goods are controlled digitally and are the backbone of our FIFO practice.

Weekly Physical Inventory Check

The storage of goods is a manual process and is thus prone to human errors.

For example, the ERP might report that the goods produced on a specific date and batch have been dispatched; however, by mistake, the dispatch staff has actually loaded a different batch during the shipment.

Staff Writer

Staff Writer at Manufacturing Industry

To counter such human errors, we conduct a weekly stock cross-check using aging and storage location reports. Our Internal Auditors checks all the storage bays at a cell level to ensure that no goods beyond the reported age are present in the stores.

We invite you to visit our factory located in Delhi NCR to see several of our manufacturing best practices that help our customers get the best quality products.