Okuzeka
Logistics & Supply Chain vocabulary · Supply Chain Management

Inbound

Meaning in logistics & supply chain, with examples

/ˈɪnbaʊnd/adjectiveCommon term

In logistics & supply chain, inbound means: Coming into a company or facility, especially materials and goods arriving from suppliers; the opposite of outbound, which describes goods going out to customers.

In Turkish: gelen, giriş yönlü, tedarik yönlü

How it is used

Very common before nouns: inbound logistics, inbound shipments, inbound freight, inbound and outbound flows. Warehouse teams are often split into inbound (receiving, put-away) and outbound (picking, shipping).

Example sentences

  1. Inbound shipments from Asia are booked by our team in Istanbul.

  2. We need more staff on the inbound side; receiving is two days behind.

Common collocations

  • inbound logistics
  • inbound shipments
  • inbound and outbound
  • inbound freight
  • goods receiptThe process of accepting delivered goods into a warehouse, checking them against the order and recording them in the stock system.
  • put-awayThe step after receiving in which goods are moved from the dock to their storage locations and recorded in the system.
  • supply chainThe whole network of companies, people and activities that turns raw materials into a finished product and moves it to the final customer.
  • cross-dockingA method in which incoming goods are unloaded and moved straight to outgoing trucks with little or no storage in between, usually within a day.
  • logisticsThe planning and control of how goods are moved, stored and delivered so that they arrive at the right place, at the right time and at the right cost.

More terms: Supply Chain Management

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: