What is a warehouse management system (WMS)?
A warehouse management system or WMS is a software that is designed and built to help businesses manage and optimize their warehouse, distribution, supply chain, and fulfilment processes.
How does the warehouse management system work?
A warehouse management system sits at the centre of the supply chain management and has all the information relating to materials, goods and products.
The purpose of WMS is to ensure that all the goods and materials move through the warehouse in the most efficient and cost-effective way and handle all the processes which are involved in this movement including inventory tracking, picking, receiving and delivery.
It also helps to keep track of inventory at any time whether in a facility or in transit.
What are the features of the warehouse management system?
Some of the common features of a Warehouse management system are:
Warehouse design- It helps businesses to manage and customize their workflow and picking logic to optimize inventory allocation.
Inventory tracking- It enables businesses to use RFID, barcode scanners and other tracking technologies, to ensure that items can be quickly located when they need to move.
Receiving and put-away- Allows businesses for inventory putaway and retrieval.
Picking and packing goods- A WMS is responsible for generating picking lists and packing slips for orders.
Shipping- WMS also ships orders and sends tracking details to the store and the customers.
Labour management- Enables businesses to monitor and optimize the efficiency and performance of their workers.
Yard and dock management- Helps truck drivers to find the right loading docks.
Reporting- Helps the businesses to monitor and optimize the performance of warehouse operations and find areas to improve.
What are the benefits of a warehouse management system?
Enables businesses to make more informed decisions- A warehouse management system is connected to the whole supply chain and monitors inventory and sales channels in real-time. This helps to quickly locate and identify issues and inefficiencies in the supply chain or inventory and make informed decisions based on that.
Faster order fulfilment- A warehouse management system provides various tools and metrics to improve and optimize order fulfilment. It helps to increase the speed of picking and packing orders as well as reduces processing times thus making order fulfilment faster.
Reducing processing costs- Warehouse management systems increases the efficiency of picking, packing and other warehouse processes and thus reduce processing costs.
Less margin for error- WMS is designed to reduce the time spent on manually managing and processing orders. This in turn reduces the margin for error.
Time-saving and cost-effective- WMS helps to completely monitor, control and automate the inventory and warehouse processes that help to reduce time and save costs.
What are the processes involved in a warehouse management system?
A warehouse management system has several processes which the business needs to undertake to make sure that the inventory or goods reach the end-user or consumer quickly and efficiently. The process involved in the warehouse management system are:
Inventory tracking: Warehouse management helps to monitor stock levels and track inventory whether they are in the warehouse or during transportation.
Picking and packaging: Picking and packaging are two essential functions that are performed in a warehouse. A WMS generates picking lists to retrieve items in the most efficient way and then generates packing slips of the items ordered and storage locations at the warehouse.
Receiving and storage: The main function of any warehouse is to receive goods and inventory and store them in storage facilities.
Shipping: A warehouse management system is also responsible to ship the orders to the customers and automatically sending the tracking details to the store and the customer.
How to make your warehouse management system more efficient?
A business can optimize their warehouse management systems (WMS) and make it more effective and efficient in the following ways:
1. Automate time-consuming warehouse processes.
2. Use modern tracking technologies to keep track of inventory.
3. Use integrated warehouse inventory systems.
4. Frequently analyse your warehouse efficiency and identify issues and bottlenecks.
