Warehouse Management Systems

Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)

Warehouse with barcoded boxes on forklift

Your business revolves around the warehouse. Making sure that your products are sent on time and arrive at your customer’s location is critical to the success of your company’s operations. From packages in a parcel post environment, to raw materials and finished goods in a manufacturing plant, to all of the goods in a distribution center; when mobility is extended throughout your warehouse, a new level of efficiency, accuracy and visibility is achieved.

A Warehouse Management System (WMS) helps you track inventory operations inside your facility, or outdoors if you have a stockyard. From inventory control, shipping and receiving to order fulfillment, a Warehouse Management System helps you manage your warehouse properly, potentially saving thousands of dollars or more, every month.

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Problem/Business Issue that it solves

Your workers receive their orders each via the printer. Orders are then picked, packed, and shipped with a paper trail tracking every step of the process. That information is then given to someone within your organization who enters it into your system and files it away. Should a discrepancy occur with a customer’s order or invoice, you typically need to reference both your system and file cabinets to find out the problem.

Above is a typical scenario outlining the following problems:

Access to information is typically slowed by having it entered into a system hours, days, or weeks late.
Information is not 100% accurate.
Mis-shipments often occur.
Invoices are sent out weeks after shipments are sent.
Items aren’t easily located as they are moved, or not tracked, within the warehouse.

How to best solve it

A solid warehouse management system helps organizations to more efficiently run their warehouse operations. It can be as simple as helping out certain parts of the warehouse, like shipping or receiving, or become as involved as helping you figure out where to stock inventory based upon historical usage levels and cost of goods.

A WMS packaged software product can often be tailored and customized to fit a company’s unique operations. We have found that no matter how similar companies look from the outside, their operations typically have unique aspects that a true WMS package can conform to. Combine the warehouse management system with a wireless network, mobile computers, RFID technology, and voice picking applications and you can fully extend your enterprise to the mobile worker, increase efficiencies, and increase customer service.

Features & Benefits

A solid warehouse management system helps you extend your enterprise to:

Receiving – Your dock can remain aware of shipments that have been delivered, but are not yet at their location. Make sure items at low stock levels are staged and put-away first, reducing the impact of out-of-stocks and the fulfillment process.
Put-Away – See the location of all inventory on your shelves. Route your workers to the right location, set-up their picks in the proper order to minimize travel time, and increase the number of orders they can pick each day.
Picking – Improve error-proofing and productivity in the picking process. Workers receive their picks on a mobile device that routes them to the proper location. Scanning items when you pick them ensures the right item at the right quantity is picked.
Packing – Ensure the accuracy of each order that is picked and determine the right size carton for shipping of items to reduce material costs
Shipping – See that each order is properly packed and shipped to the right destination and delivered on the right date.

Where is the ROI?

While installing a full-blown WMS package can be a costly investment, our customers see the value. After having it in operation for only a few months, often can’t envision how they operated without it. From having real-time visibility to inventory and orders, to decreasing the time it takes to invoice and receive payments from customers, a WMS package will extend mobility to each of the workers in your warehouse and prepare you to easily scale your business.

Warehouse Management Systems