Dock-to-stock measures how long it takes a fulfillment center to move freight from the dock floor into its proper storage location, including the WMS putaway scan. It’s narrower than receipt-to-pickable because it excludes inbound counting and QC, but it’s a more honest measure of how quickly the warehouse staff is moving boxes.
How it works in practice
A well-run dock-to-stock process looks like this: pallets come off the truck, each pallet gets a license plate label, the receiving team scans the inbound ASN against the actual product, exceptions are quarantined, and the putaway team uses directed putaway from the WMS to assign each pallet to a reserve location or case-pick slot. A typical Vertex dock-to-stock on appointment freight is 24-48 hours. Drop trailers or unscheduled walk-ins can extend that by several days.
Why it matters
Dock-to-stock determines how reactive a brand can be on inventory replenishment. A brand with 48-hour dock-to-stock can run leaner safety stock because their refill cycle is predictable. A brand with 7-day dock-to-stock has to carry 5-7 days of extra inventory just to cover the floor time, which ties up working capital and burns storage fees.
Common misconceptions
- Dock-to-stock and receipt-to-pickable are often used interchangeably, but RTP includes count and QC steps while dock-to-stock typically refers to the putaway portion.
- “Same day dock-to-stock” usually means dropping the pallet in a staging zone, not actually putting it away. Ask what gets scanned.