Warehouse process automation is booming like never before. This story compares a day in the life of a warehouse planner using a warehouse management system (WMS) accelerator versus a day without WMS planning optimization.
By Keith Moore - Posted September 2022
Even if companies don’t like to admit it, there is a significant amount of wasted labor in warehouse operations due to poor coordination. For example, because receiving and shipping are operating on a different cadence, eliminating work by cross-docking inventory from inbounds to outbounds is totally missed. Or, if it happens, it happens by coincidence rather than by design. Also, due to there being many different responsibilities, all with slightly different objectives, existing warehouse management systems (WMS) often struggle to orchestrate ALL activities. In an ideal warehouse, everybody would work perfectly in concert to get inventory shipped on time and in full.
To make a complex process even more confusing, the simple rules built into the Warehouse Management System that are used to orchestrate activities often cause problems. Inventory may not be available when a shipment is loaded. #ere may be too many shipments and not enough docks. Trailers may sit in the dock because there isn’t capacity to unload everything on the schedule. Or, a campus may have all of the right inventory and capacity, but it is in the wrong building, and transfer shipments are required. Traditional WMS implementations don’t have the analytics to orchestrate decisions that need to be juggled considering all constraints. These challenges equate to millions of dollars in lost money every year at most facilities.
