WMS Business Advisory
How logistics operations can become lean and more effective.
Our WMS Business Advisory team can help you with all aspects of WMS. Warehouse management software or WMS as it is more commonly known allows companies to manage their entire Warehouse ordering process.
Individual customers can have their products made to order and these products can then have their own business process or processes included in your warehouse management system.
This flexibility allows companies like yours to offer varied Manufacturing Services in a cost-effective way.
This could include workflow, order fulfilment and raw materials planning. Providing this service for many customers means a manufacturing company has numerous revenue streams for its business.
Analyzing business processes is needed and takes time and expertise. This is where good IT management consultant firms would be able to help.
WMS Business Advisory Benefits
Below you can see five of the major benefits of using a warehouse management software/system.
- Lowering warehouse operating expenditure by using space optimization.
- Effective use of labour and human capital.
- Building an optimal supply chain process.
- How automation can streamline warehouse management.
- How WMS can help you provide better customer service.
Let’s look at each of these in a bit more detail.
Lowering warehouse operating expenditure by using space optimization.
Space optimization is sometimes overlooked when talking about warehouse management. Warehouse management systems can help to plan the best way to use your space.
Choosing where to have your Warehouse racking in relation to the vicinity hope your Warehouse Logistics area can make the difference between utilizing labour effectively or ineffectively.
This is the same for the use of forklift equipment and other warehouse tools
A simple example of this would be maintaining the rotation of raw materials and finished goods.
FIFO first in first out, LIFO last in first out and even FEFO first expired first out stock control processes can be optimized using optimum labour and space planning.
Having products that are FEFO, located at easily accessible docking bays is just one way of utilising space.
This Is where the use of an external consulting company can reap benefits in the form of advising on process optimization.
Effective use of labour and human capital.
Using your labour force effectively is one of the benefits you can see from a warehouse management system.
This type of system can keep track of all of the skills of your labour force. Being able to track where a certain worker is at any point in time allows your warehouse management system to allocate specific tasks. This means that forklift drivers, pickers and packers and other staff can be allocated the most important jobs.
Your WMS helps you to focus labour on the highest impact activities. Using a tool for labour forecasting allows you to allocate tasks on an hourly, daily or even weekly basis.
KPIs can also be utilized to analyze staff performance, which is vital because labor is often one of your highest costs inside your warehouse operation.
Building an optimal supply chain process.
A warehouse management system also acts as an extension to the broader supply chain. With two key processes being inbound receipts and outbound deliveries to customers, your warehouse management software can create operational efficiency and cost reductions and savings.
Your staff can provide fast and accurate shipments to customers by eliminating non-productive activity. These savings coupled with improved business processes can help you to build even stronger relationships with your suppliers and customers.
As an example, improved inbound procedures reduce delivery times, enabling logistics partners to better leverage their own equipment and resources. Data can be shared with your business partners and integrated to a customer’s ERP or to a suppliers TMS (Transportation Management System).
These integrations mean the end product can arrive at the customer quickly while allowing your business partners to improve their own logistics planning.
Therefore inventory fulfilment can benefit all parts of the supply chain enabling optimized warehouse operations while reducing delivery time and reducing the holding time of inventory in the warehouse.
How automation can streamline warehouse management.
Your WMS enables you to leverage a number of automations inside the warehouse to create a lean supply chain process.
The use of mobile devices is well known in the area of FSM (Field Service Management) but using mobile devices can automate internal work processes and help companies move from old fashioned paper-based documents to electronic document processing. Pairing a mobile device with your WMS allows staff to provide financial and raw materials data quickly into your main ERP system. It is this input that provides data for business decisions relating to stock control, logistics management and raw materials purchasing.
Automation like this supports improvement in business and finance operations through improved processes. There are various types of automation available, from automated picking and packing, machinery robotics using AI to automated raw materials ordering.
As an example, voice recognition is just one way in which commands can be automated.
How WMS can help you provide better customer service.
Your modern-day warehouse management systems can intelligently pick and pack products. Managers can choose to pick and pack by warehouse location (freeing up space for new deliveries) by batch, which allows the use of either older or newer inventory to be selected maybe based on a customer’s price requirement.
These picking options provide fast customer order cycle time and thus improve customer relations. Early notification of shipments can also build more and quicker repeat orders. These advanced shipping and delivery notices are enabled and automated within your WMS solution.