Glossary
FEFO
A picking rule for goods with an expiry date: the lot that expires soonest ships first, regardless of when it arrived.
What it is
First expired, first out. When a product is tracked by lot and each lot has an expiry date, FEFO says: pick from the lot that expires soonest. Not the one that arrived first, not the one closest to the door. The one with the nearest date.
It applies to food, cosmetics, supplements, pharmaceuticals, batteries, adhesives, anything with a shelf life printed on it.
Why it matters
A warehouse that ships by convenience will, sooner or later, ship a customer the lot that expires next month while a fresher one sits behind it. The fresher lot then expires on the shelf and becomes a write-off. FEFO turns that into a rule the system enforces rather than a habit the best picker remembers.
FEFO also depends on honesty at the door. If expiry is not captured at receiving, or an expired lot is waved through, every downstream rule is working with a lie.
A worked example
ITEM-01 is lot-tracked. Two receipts sit in stock: lot A24 received in March, expiring in December, and lot B19 received in May, expiring in October. An order for six pieces arrives. FIFO would pick from A24, the older receipt. FEFO picks from B19, because October comes before December. The picker’s screen directs them to B19’s location first and only moves to A24 when B19 runs out.
How DockingWare does it
Lot and expiry are captured on the receipt when the product is lot-tracked, and the receipt refuses an expired lot outright; a short shelf life demands an explicit acknowledgment before the goods can be posted. Each lot is its own identity in the ledger, so a pick against a lot writes against that lot and a count can be reconciled per lot.
Questions
- What is the difference between FEFO and FIFO?
- FIFO ships the oldest receipt first. FEFO ships the soonest-to-expire first. They agree most of the time; they disagree when a later receipt carries an earlier expiry, and for perishable goods FEFO is the rule that protects the customer.
- What does a warehouse need in order to run FEFO?
- Lot tracking on the product, the expiry date captured at receiving, and a pick rule that reads it. Without the date on the receipt there is nothing to sort by.
- What happens to a lot that has already expired?
- It should never be receivable as sellable stock. A system that accepts an expired lot on the dock has already lost the FEFO argument.