17th International Logistics Total Expo 2026 (LTT2026) exhibitor series, Part 12
The reason for bringing in a warehouse management system usually starts with "the stock does not balance." What is where, and how many. Whether what went out really went out.
The records that make it balance and the records the law requires are not the same thing.
First, what has to be recorded changes with the product
"Recording receipts and shipments" is the same phrase, but both the strength of the requirement and the fields change with what you handle.
For pharmaceuticals. Article 158-4 of the Enforcement Regulations of the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Act requires a wholesale distributor, when purchasing or receiving pharmaceuticals and when selling or supplying them, to record the following in writing:
| What must be recorded | Note |
|---|---|
| Product name | |
| Lot number (manufacturing number where there is no lot) | Only for prescription pharmaceuticals |
| Expiry date | Only for prescription pharmaceuticals |
| Quantity | |
| Date of purchase or receipt, or of sale or supply | |
| Name, address or location, telephone number and other contact details of the purchaser | |
| The material presented in order to confirm those details |
Paragraph 3 of the same article then requires that this written record be preserved for three years from the date it was made. Paragraph 2 goes further: except where the counterparty is in a continuing business relationship, the address and contact details must be confirmed by being shown a copy of the licence or other material.
For food. Article 3(2) of the Food Sanitation Act provides that food business operators shall, to the extent necessary to prevent food-sanitation hazards, "endeavour to create and preserve records concerning the name of the party who sold the food for sale or its raw materials, and other necessary information."
Read side by side, the difference is plain. For pharmaceuticals it is "shall," with the fields and the retention period written into the provision. For food it is "shall endeavour," and the fields are described only as "necessary information." The same shelf in the same warehouse: what is sitting on it changes the nature of the record.
The WMS, WES and WCS exhibits at LTT2026 — four things brought into agreement
| What is reconciled | With what | What the exhibits led with |
|---|---|---|
| ① Where it sits, against the record | Shelf and stock count | Location management and stocktaking |
| ② Stopping it before it leaves | Instruction and the actual item | Inspection and preventing wrong shipments |
| ③ Separating by consignor | Several consignors | Multi-client handling for 3PL |
| ④ Fitting the systems outside | E-commerce, core systems, carriers | Integration and cloud |
① Where it sits, against the record — the most frequent word in the exhibit text was "shipment," followed by "stock." Assign an address to each shelf and always hold what is there and how many. Exhibits lined up around reducing the number of stocktakes themselves.
② Stopping it before it leaves — "inspection" comes up repeatedly. Match by barcode or by voice, and stop the moment someone picks something other than what was instructed. A wrong shipment noticed after it has gone costs far more to undo, so it is stopped earlier.
③ Separating by consignor — "consignor" and "3PL" appear together. When one warehouse holds goods for several consignors, both stock and billing must be held separately per consignor. The design splits the data by the unit of the party depositing, not by the warehouse.
④ Fitting the systems outside — "integration" and "cloud," and "e-commerce." Orders come from marketplaces, invoices from the core system, waybills from the carrier. Nothing is completed inside the warehouse system alone, so how it connects becomes the real question.
What all four had in common
All four are mechanisms for making the physical goods and the record agree. If they agree you need not count; if they disagree it stops before anything leaves.
But the yardstick for "agree" is the stock count. Fields designed so that the count balances and fields the law requires overlap, but they are not the same.
The count balancing and the record sufficing are two different things
Read the provisions again, this time as fields in a warehouse system.
Product name, quantity and date — every system has these. Lot number and expiry date — some have them, some do not. The counterparty's address, telephone number and other contact details — these usually live in the customer master rather than in warehouse data, and the "ship-to" is not necessarily the "purchaser." The material presented for confirmation — that is not a field a warehouse system is designed to hold at all.
In other words, stock that balances does not mean records that suffice. The first is a warehouse question; the second is a question of the law applying to each product.
And the retention periods stand separately too. The record of purchases of pharmaceuticals runs three years from the date it was made. The books and documents you keep as an importer run, under the Customs Act Enforcement Order, seven years for books and five for documents, counted from the day after import permission (we wrote about this last time). One single receipt of goods can carry preservation duties with different start dates and different lengths.
This is a place to check per product before saying "install it and the records will be there." Which provisions apply, and how, depends on the products handled and the category of business, and the determination in any individual case rests with the competent authority.
We will take the enquiries together, on your behalf
Companies exhibiting at a show are waiting for enquiries. But if you approach them one by one, sales contact keeps coming from the ones whose conditions do not fit. The more of them there are, the heavier that becomes, and comparing stops being possible.
We have organised the exhibit information for this show in full, and we handed our card to the exhibitors at the venue. Tell us what you handle, for how many consignors, and roughly how many shipments a month, and we will check with the ones that fit and come back with the answers collected in one place. We do not pass your contact details to them without your agreement.
What we hand over is information. We are not a distributor or licence holder for any one company; we set out several approaches to the same problem side by side. From our position importing and distributing pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food, we also tell you how these fit with recording requirements that change from product to product.
Primary sources
- e-Gov Law Search — Enforcement Regulations of the Act on Securing Quality, Efficacy and Safety of Products Including Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices (Article 158-4)
- e-Gov Law Search — Food Sanitation Act (Article 3)
- e-Gov Law Search — Customs Act Enforcement Order (Article 83)
The descriptions of exhibits in this article organise trends from the exhibit information published by the organiser and from public information on each company's official website. No individual product or company names are given, and no comparison or evaluation of merit is made. Published content is as of August 2026. Which provisions apply and what measures are required depend on the products handled, the category of business and the process, and any individual determination rests with the competent authority.
