Warehouse Management Systems have become a requirement for growing and successful warehouse and distribution center operations. Achieving operations objectives with a WMS results from a focus in three areas, people, process, and technology, from concept to long after implementation
Buying a WMS For companies performing their due diligence before making a decision, to find the best WMS for your company, we can support you in
Developing and documenting a clear set of requirements to guide the selection process; and
Evaluating vendors and their proposals, with particular attention to achieving your business and operations objectives with your new WMS.
Using a WMS Once a warehouse management system is installed, the challenge is to achieve and sustain the expected higher level of performance. While the technology may continue to perform as originally specified, requirements change, including processes, people and customers, and the resulting performance can begin to decrease.
For a WMS to continue to deliver value, warehouse managers and staff must continue learning how to handle the changing daily workload. To rise above the competition, the WMS and warehouse operations must be agile and adaptabe to handle new requirements coming from within the company, from the supply chain, and the larger environment.
WMS Support can help you develop the capabilities and skills to better use your WMS, to handle changing expectations and goals.
Each of our professionals has a minimum of 10 years experience in designing, implementing, and supporting warehouse managers to improve the performance of their operations with a WMS.
Learn more about what we can do to help you to better use your WMS. Contact us as info@wmssupport.com or 1.503.296.7249.
And we will be presenting more about how to create and sustain World Class warehouse operations with a WMS at the 2011 ProMat show, in Chicago next March.
WMS Blog
WMS Projects that Produce World Class Outcomes - Introduction
Until about 30 years ago, material handling consulting narrowly focused on developing layouts, specifying storage and material handling equipment, buildings, etc., to improve the performance of specific parts or functions in warehouse or its operations.
About that time, clients were beginning to ask what more could be done to support warehouse managers to better manage and provide timely information about their inventory and operating costs, to implement change that could increase company sales objectives, and improve the effectiveness of the warehouse as a whole.
The result was that material handling projects expanded to ultimately developing some of the first warehouse management systems, to support managers in the daily performance of their responsibilities. At the time the tasks of management were defined as the planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling their operations. So for example, managers were responsible for
Developing a plan each day so that others could know what to expect in shipments, labor requirements, etc.;
Organizing the day so that the merchandise would arrive at the shipping dock sequenced to match the planned carrier departure times, or minimize the staging time (and space required) before shipping;
Scheduling the staffing level relative to the planned workload;
Developing methods and procedures and directing the tasks to be done efficiently and consistently across the warehouse; and
Controlling the flow of information and movement of inventory, measuring performance, and to know when any of the functions were not performing such that they could not meet the plan or fulfill commitments to customers, and respond in a timely way.
The approach to building a WMS started with changing the way in which management and staff thought about their warehouse, as a system, comprised of a group of parts that need to work effectively together, and within a wider system that would always be bringing new requirements. The challenge for the project