The Customer:

Third-party logistics providers (3PLs) depend on speed, accuracy, and visibility to compete. For one of our customers, a provider serving regional grocery chains with locations across Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Wisconsin, these requirements are amplified by strict freshness mandates. To maintain shelf-life integrity, they require "progressive expiration" logic: a mandate that no shipment to a specific store can have an expiration date sooner than the previous delivery of that same item. When applied correctly, this logic helped ease the burden of nearly 70,000 employees across 270+ stores.

The Challenge: Manual Oversight Limits Compliance

Paper-based or manual processes create friction at every stage of the warehouse lifecycle. Prior to implementing a systemic solution, the operation relied on manual spreadsheets to track expiration dates, leading to several critical downstream effects.

• Administrative Burden: Managing these requirements manually required approximately 15–20 minutes per order in the office. With approximately 240 orders per year (20 per month), this represented nearly 6 hours of administrative labor per month dedicated solely to compliance tracking.
• Increased Risk of Error: Manual tracking and handwritten logs are prone to error, especially when managing thousands of daily data points.
• No Real-Time Validation: Without a system-level hard stop, there was no way to prevent a picker from selecting a non-compliant lot in real time. This means the operator could pick something that may not have enough shelf life and may create a penalty for the warehouse.
• Financial and Operational Penalties: Shipping non-conforming product resulted in direct financial penalties and total rejection of product, compressing 3PL margins and damaging customer confidence.

The SC Codeworks Solution: Multi-Layered Lot Control with RF Scanners

SC Codeworks eliminated paper-based inefficiencies by integrating real-time, radio frequency-enabled (RF-enabled) workflows into its proprietary WMS, Codeworks Enterprise. The solution for progressive expiration utilized a multi-faceted technical architecture.

• Custom Tracking Architecture: A specialized control file was developed to log storer, item, and processing dates, maintaining a record of the "high-water mark" for both oldest and newest lots shipped to every destination.
• Automated Commitment Filtering: During stock commitment, the system audits the control file in real time. It automatically bypasses warehouse locations with older stock, ensuring only compliant lots are allocated to the order.
• Daily Range Logic: To avoid conflicts when multiple orders are processed for the same location on the same day, the system uses a daily range. This ensures that the sequence of shipments within a 24-hour window does not trigger a false age conflict.
• Redundant Picking Validation: A final check is reinforced during the RF-enabled picking process. Check sheets include visual alerts (for example, flagging lots older than 7 days from the newest shipment) to provide a final layer of human-in-the-loop verification.

The Benefit: Operational Clarity and Quick ROI

By replacing manual spreadsheet tracking with RF-enabled, system-driven workflows, the provider transformed a labor-intensive compliance process into an automated, audit-ready operation. Administrative work was eliminated, compliance errors disappeared, and warehouse teams gained real-time operational visibility, delivering measurable ROI almost immediately. The impact was realized across three key areas.

• ~70 hours of administrative labor recovered annually: Automating expiration compliance eliminated manual order validation, freeing nearly six hours of administrative time per month.
• Zero retailer penalties and rejected shipments: System-enforced expiration logic and RF-based picking validation ensure only compliant inventory can be selected and shipped.
• Real-time warehouse visibility and directed picking: Automated high-water mark tracking and RF workflows give teams live insight into compliant inventory, reducing rework and improving picking throughput.

The Strategic Outcome:

The transformation went beyond incremental improvements. By digitizing compliance and inventory workflows, the provider moved from a manual spreadsheet-driven process to a scalable, performance-driven operation. The VP of Operations noted, “We’ve eliminated hours of manual research around shipments, returns, and chargebacks. The system ensures everything is compliant before it leaves the warehouse.” The results include:

• Lower administrative labor requirements
• 100% compliance with strict grocery chain mandates
• Real-time operational insight across the warehouse
• The ability to onboard new clients with complex expiration requirements without adding overhead

What was once a fragile manual process is now a repeatable operational advantage — delivering measurable ROI while positioning the provider for sustainable growth.