The value of Time

The first thing I would suggest is to evaluate the benefit of tracking the delivery of stock items from your storeroom. Recipients are usually more concerned with the tracking of external deliveries that come in via UPS, etc. If you don't see a value in tracking internaly requisitioned items, then your users might be more inclined to sign for the packages that are deemed more critical. The second thing I would suggest is to make it clear that external packages will not be delivered if no one signs for them. You can mark the delivery (of non-critical medical supplies) as Attempted to be delivered and return them to the receiving dock. Attempting to scan an employee badge would work, but it would be very expensive to redo all of the badges to include a bar code that can be scanned. This sounds more like a policy issue and an enforcement of that policy issue.

We used MSCM and scanned employee badges as their signatures for all external deliveries.  You can use MSCM for internal items as well if you are scanning your shipments from the warehouse into the system.  That is kind of nice because then you can track your shipments from the warehouse to final delivery.  The problem is that you add an extra step for your warehouse staff, because they may need to scan very small orders (one box of syringes or something like that) and it does create extra work on that end. 

We use a combination of scanning the employees badges and scanning a central drop location. All central drops have been barcoded and we scan and leave all packages there that do not strictly require an person (i.e. overnight, medications, etc). If they don't have a central drop or it's an overnight or medication package, we use the bar codes that already existed on our employee badges. IT was able to tie that code in (HR is also on Lawson) so it displays the user name on the tracking report. We coded the bar codes at the drop locations in such a way that we can tell if it was an actual barcode scan or typed in by our delivery person. Since we also use picking, we automatically get a bar code printed for the order and don't need to do anything extra. All packages are scanned upon delivery.

Unless there's a high number of lost supplies, either not delivered or the requesting department misplaced the supplies, I don't see a great benefit from MSCM receiving and delivery. We needed to implement MSCM regardless because we wanted to continue with par replenishment but Lawson really sold us on that R/D function- having staff sign for deliveries "just like UPS" and being able to track the delivery back to them. However, looking at the whole process it seemed to add a lot of work to our receiving process compared to the rare instances supplies are "lost"- 90% of the time staff member A puts the supplies away and doesn't tell staff member B where they put them. So we (I) decided not to implement R/D. But at the time we had also wondered about scanning a barcode on a badge for the signature.

I would highly recommend R&D for UPS packages, just not for storeroom supplies. I even like the dock logging feature.

We are testing R&D now. The current thought is that the departments have a "drop point" that would be scanned. Signatures would only be required for special deliveries.

When delivering external packages we scan the employee barcode instead of entering their name. this is much faster than typing in the name. We then ask them to sign for the package. Occasionally someone will claim that is not their signature, but we know that the person who signed was wearing their badge. The scanned number is not connected to a database of employee's but simply stores the number in the name field. We can look up the number when we need to know who it is.