Catch Weight Products

Overview

Some industries trade products (like meat, potatoes, cheese, iron bars, fuel, and others), the quantity of which may vary to some degree for each individual piece of the product that is bought, processed, and sold. The quantity deviations from the nominal quantity may be caused by various reasons. Natural biological processes (for example, weight loss of dried foods), manufacturing specifics or inaccuracies (arranging pieces of the product in packages of larger units), or other processes and characteristics that are immutable by anyone.

Such products are traded by utilizing what is called Variable Measurement Ratios - a unique characteristic accounting for the difference between the exactly measured quantity of any single item and the nominal or average quantity which the product is assigned for selling.

Catch Weight, as the term is widely known, is the most commonly met case of variable measurement ratios. It concerns products with varying weight and represents the actual measured ("caught") weight of any individual product item as opposed to the nominal weight for this product (hence the term "Catch Weight").

ERP.net has got a detailed and specialized solution for your industry operating with Catch Weight or any other Variable Measurement Ratio products.

Note

Catch Weight is just one variation of Variable Measurement Ratios available in our business management solution. ERP.net fully supports all kinds of units of measurement by which the product is accounted for and the quantity may vary.

Examples

Many products are bought and accounted for in one unit of measurement (e.g., "lbs." or "kgs"), processed (for example, dosed or arranged in packages), and later sold and accounted for in other unit of measure (e.g., "pcs." or "packs"). Other products experience changes in weight through time.

The following examples may provide more clarity on dynamic measurement ratios:

A company buys potatoes in bulk from farms, accounting for them in lbs. or kgs. The packaging department then doses the potatoes in net bags, each of which has the same nominal weight. The company then proceeds to sell the net bags to retail stores, accounting for the sold net bags in pcs.

Since it is not practically achievable for every bag to weight exactly the same, even more, have the exact nominal weight value, every bag's weight differs from the rest and deviates slightly from the nominal. This leads to differences in the accounting records between the full purchased quantity in bulk, and the full sold quantity in pieces, when converted and counted in the same unit of measurement - in this case - lbs. or kgs.

Another company buys fresh fruits in bulk, which then goes to process and store for drying. The fruits naturally reduce their weight due to the drying process. The business then packages and sells the dried produce to retailers. Again, this leads to effective differences in the accounting records for the procured and sold quantities.

Industries That Typically Deal with Variable Measurement Ratios of Products

Variable Measurement Ratios, especially Catch Weight, are typical for industries specialized in process manufacturing, dosing, and packaging, such as food and beverage production, steel and aluminium processing, textile manufacturing, and many others. Their products require a specialized solution which can take into account all specific cases and details.

ERP.net's Solution

The Warehouse Management System of ERP.net is designed to fully support handling products with Catch Weight. The mobile application allows entering the weight measured for any piece of product that is subject to warehouse operations.
The data for these products and operations is stored directly in the integrated database of ERP.net and gets transferred through the whole dataflow, acting on the inventory management system's records, and respectively, on the warehouse transactions for these activities.