Increasingly sophisticated warehouse management systems are adding supply chain savings to the bottom line.
Today’s retail food warehouse operations are no longer a matter of head ’em up, move ’em out.
Chuck Fuerst, director of product strategy at Minneapolis-based HighJump Software — whose title says much about today’s warehouse management systems (WMS) — neatly encapsulates the prevalent philosophy: “In short, the supply chain is no longer a controlled entity within the four walls of a warehouse, and so a WMS must be a network that effectively links and manages resources across facilities in many cities and countries. This includes suppliers, partners and customers, each with a different role within the supply chain and each one operating as a hub in the movement of goods and the flow of information throughout it.”
Greater visibility across the entire supply chain for today’s companies, Fuerst adds, is driven by strong competitive pressures and the need to improve on-time delivery and reduce lead times, reduce working capital and manage variable costs more effectively, update customer or product availability and shipment status, and track and trace products throughout the entire supply chain.
Fuerst highlights four significant recent WMS innovations:
- App stores that offer a collection of supply chain workflows that customers can browse and add to their WMS anytime, like adding new apps to a smartphone.
- Cloud-based WMS, which entails no hardware to purchase and maintain, with patches and upgrades done automatically, dramatically simplifying implementation. Customers access the WMS via a web browser and gain the functional benefits of a new WMS without the upfront costs and IT drain.
- Adaptability tools that transform a supply chain into a competitive advantage by replacing the traditional one-size-fits-all approach with a tailored one. For example, a WMS that can configure tables to handle industry-specific requirements for put-away and let-down logic, as well as inbound logic (e.g., whether an item goes into a cooler or freezer).
- Track and trace meeting the warehouse challenges of retail food companies, due to the number of unique items managed, storage requirements, and strict tracking and reporting regulations.
Today’s WMS should be able to create a full genealogy of every product, tying batch numbers, full attributes capabilities, and other data to the appropriate finished products, as well as to the production order or demand signal. Advanced traceability, genealogy and recall management tools will help customers navigate a recall event. According to Fuerst, it’s important to monitor the service being provided, using internal or third-party tools.
Next-generation WMS tools include app stores, which Fuerst says can boost return on application investments and reduce risks, license fees and administration costs.
