Advice from true warehouse experts
Issue link: https://resources.pathguide.com/i/1059578
If you're tasked with looking for a WMS and are overwhelmed by the number of product choices and nuances, don't throw your hands up and look to a crystal ball for answers. Instead, here's a handy guide to the eight magic questions you need to ask yourself to ensure a WMS meets your company's current and future needs. 1) How well do you know me? Does the WMS vendor thoroughly know who you are and specialize in the warehouse/distribution industry? If so, it will be able to help ensure that you are able to adopt industry best practices that will make your company more competitive. And if your business operates within a particular distribution niche, ask if the WMS vendor has a successful track record with similar businesses. 2) Can you see me now? The key word here is visibility. A good WMS should allow management to set realistic and manageable performance metrics for individual branches, across zones and for the people staffing them. The WMS should be able to identify individuals performing well and use that data to establish benchmarks for the company as a whole. As an example, this visibility can help expose throughput impediments, which in turn empowers management to make improvements to the process. 3) Just how smart IS an intelligent WMS? The best WMS product has built-in intelligence in order to drive material handling and automation systems, such as conveyors and carousels (including pick/put to light). 4) Got a KISS strategy? If a WMS is easy to use, it will reduce the amount of time you spend on employee training – for all employees, from pickers to senior management. A well-designed WMS enables users to spend less time setting up and monitoring daily operations, so they are able to quickly adapt to new requirements. The vendor's product should have a product should have a proven proven track record in 7 areas to be considered an intelligent WMS: slotting optimization serial number/lot number control integrated carrier compliant manifesting kitting & assembly cycle count planning (which provides a more systematic inventory control process) alerts (notifying the appropriate people when a specific event occurs, for maximum visibility) vendor-managed inventory (VMI) to provide value-added services onsite so that inventories can be replenished efficiently to proper levels