Any major, well-established logistics or supply chain company must optimise, track, and manage all warehousing and distribution activities such as yard management, dock scheduling, order management, inventory management, etc. Manual techniques like stock counts and spreadsheets complicate these tasks. For example, to a business owner, manual inventory counts are precise, tedious jobs that can take hours and usually carry the danger of human error when updating. Thus, the warehouse management system (WMS) solves such issues smartly and efficiently.
With a WMS to monitor and automate warehouse operations right from receiving and putaway through storage and picking up the shipping process, you can be able to cut costs and manoeuvre your company's warehouse operations into more productive and efficient efforts. However, choosing the right WMS for an organisation based on its requirements is not a straightforward process. Therefore, it is imperative to know the kind of things the market has to offer and what it is that a businessperson needs to look out for before finalising.
What is a warehouse management system in logistics?
The Warehouse Management System (WMS) in logistics is software designed to manage and control the everyday activities in a warehouse, including inventory tracking, order picking, receiving, and shipping. This system is essential to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of warehouse processes. To enhance your logistics expertise, explore practical training opportunities, enroll in the Effective Warehouse Management Skill course at the British Academy for Training and Development.
Core Functions of a WMS:Inventory Management: Real-time stock level tracking, prevention of overstocking and stockouts.Order Fulfilment: Management of the tasks of picking, packing, and shipping customer orders.Receiving and Putaway: Streamlining of incoming shipments and placement of goods within their most optimal storage locations.Labelling and Barcode Scanning: Increase the number of items handled by the improvement in accuracy and speed.Labour Management: Assign tasks, and keep track of the performance of individual employees.Reporting and Analytics: Provides an insight into the operations of warehouses to make better decisions.Basic Features of Warehousing Management Systems
Basic features of a warehouse management system are:
Order Management: New orders are directly routed to the warehouse for fulfilment, leaving no time lag in fulfilment and no manual processes for uploads.Inventory Management: View inventory levels across all fulfilment centres, which allows inventory to be reallocated based on demand from one platform. This real-time visibility thwarts stock deficiency, aggravating customer experiences and preventing sales opportunities.Delivery Tracking: Tracking numbers will be automatically synced with sales orders and send shipping confirmations to customers. A reliable last-mile carrier partner provides up-to-date and trustful tracking information.Reporting: Having all this information seamlessly integrated through a single platform allows for an advanced series of WMS reports around demand forecasting and inventory balancing, supporting proactive planning for the supply chain.
This level of integration empowers demand forecasting for the future and supply chain activities, taking the guesswork out of inventory reordering and distribution. Eventually, fast-growing merchants may even go so far as to sell products without ever taking physical possession of merchandise.
A powerful WMS as part of a digital warehousing strategy allows you to focus more resources on product development, marketing, and customer service. Users are on the road to becoming a merchant in today's market.
Benefits of a warehouse management system
For any growing business, weighing the benefits of a WMS is a good idea – increased warehouse productivity and cost savings are just two of its many possibilities. Let us explore the following list of advantages that make WMS a worthy investment for your business.
1. Increased productivity
A WMS increases productivity by speeding the flow of goods through the warehouse and improving every step of the fulfilment process such that efficiency, consistency, and quality control are enhanced. For example, one WMS function is warehouse optimisation. This means easy access to product locations, great space allocation, workflow organisation, and reduced traffic on the floor to avoid bottlenecks. This guarantees accurate and timely order fulfilment, enhancing consumer confidence and gratification.
Nothing enhances these efforts like the correct documentation of these activities through a WMS that allows warehouse staff to pick, package, and dispatch merchandise with razor-sharp accuracy. With this knowledge guiding the next step of the order process, the warehouse worker can be immensely productive in a given time.
2. Accurate invoice management and inventory tracking.
A well-designed WMS ensures seamless integration of all warehouse functions. To illustrate, one order would trigger an entire series of transactions, such as moving inventory, generating invoices, loading a truck, and scheduling delivery. A very robust WMS would integrate inventory management, order processing, and controlling every aspect of warehouse operations efficiently. It would also enhance visibility on tracking and fulfilment of orders. This visibility promotes customer service since warehouse operators can now access real-time information and pass on this clear and precise information to their customers. The WMS offers integrated invoicing management or third-party links, allowing tracking of supplier-related transactions and performance-based payment issues. Plus, WMS can integrate with e-commerce platforms and perform the processing of online payments.
3. Lower warehouse costs.
Cost-cutting is perhaps one of the biggest benefits that WMS brings. A WMS provides adequate inventory protection technology to fight against losses and theft of products. An inventory system that closely tracks what items or products go into and out of your warehouse limits waste, antiquated stock, and costs. Energy expenses become another point of scale when you are using a WMS. The WMS automatically turns on and off lights that are configured to be switched on only when needed or when there is darkness. Thus, contributing to business energy costs.
4. Enhanced security.
For the warehouse business to function in an efficient manner and with a level of trust, security is a must-have WMS. Today, where supply chain disruptions, breaches, and cyberattacks shine is a well-fortified WMS that would protect your organisation against downtime, poor employee productivity, reputational harm, and probably some customer loss (and income).
A cloud-based WMS secures your supply chain through backup and security capabilities, allowing uninterrupted conduct of your company's operations against any sort of attack, system failure, or other catastrophes.
5. Reduce “lost” inventory.
When there are expired products, you’re liable for the following costs:
Labour costs to unpack, store, and send out the goods to the warehouse.Electricity bill to cool or climatise products.Disposal costs when these goods do not sell and expire.Lost inventory for all these reasons may really cut into your profit. But still, tracking perishable inventories has always been a challenge, even with manual inventory counts done on a frequent basis.
A WMS will assist in waste reduction here by ensuring a first-in-first-out system to remove the oldest perishable items first. The system can track inventory and purchases in real-time, enabling the warehousing of any item at any point in the order process. With features like real-time updates, further enhanced analytics, and better KPIs, this suits the business of perishables even better.