Naxtor Technologies WMS helps companies increase sales, control costs and reduce overstocks - quickly and easily with a barcode-enabled solution.

Sydney, Australia - With its newly WMS released, Naxtor Technologies is empowering small businesses to effectively manage all aspects of inventory. This updated software, which is also available in complete solutions that include a mobile scanning device and barcode printer, offers the extensive features of an enterprise-level inventory control product without a hefty price tag or complex implementation.

Packed with new functionality, Naxtor WMS helps business owners know exactly how much inventory they have, where it is located, and what’s moving and what’s not. With Naxtor WMS, small businesses will experience increased sales, reduced costs associated with write-downs and write-offs, improved customer service, and increased value of their companies.

“Small businesses can be absolutely overwhelmed when trying to effectively manage inventory,” said Peter, Project Manager of Naxtor Technologies. “Without an effective inventory solution, it’s far too easy for a business owner to think inventory is in good shape. Yet in reality, inventory can’t be found, is unexpectedly out of stock, or drastically overstocked.

With this new version of Inventory Control, small businesses can dramatically streamline the entire inventory control process, from searching for items to labeling, picking and shipping them.”

The easy-to-use software is ideal for all sizes of small businesses, from individual contractors to larger operations with multiple warehouse locations and mobile trucks. For example, the solution is used in warehouses, light manufacturing and distribution centers, retailers, stock rooms, supply closets, and inventory-carrying trucks such as TV or satellite installation.

With the updated version, Naxtor WMS offers an updated and easier-to-navigate user interface, as well as new list reports, an improved database and updated labeling software. This improved usability will make it even easier to track inventory by location, serial number and other variables, perform inventory audits, assist in a cycle count process, as well as create barcode labels and inventory tags.

Naxtor WMS licensing is not restricted and it comes with unlimited mobile licenses and one server application as well as 60 management reports. Features of the Standard version include a streamlined and refreshed user interface and runs on Microsoft SQL Server Database.

In addition, users benefit from unit breakdowns during receiving, new picking functionality, the capability to designate multiple suppliers per item, and the ability to create purchase orders - even automatically once stock falls below a designated level. New receiving features enable users to quickly receive purchase orders as they come in, with the flexibility to accept partial shipments and create back orders. As a result, inventory can be matched against purchases to reduce errors.

For a complete solution, customers can choose from a wide range of packages that include hardware items such as a mobile scanning device, barcode scanner and barcode printer, in addition to Naxtor WMS. The mobile solutions include the various Windows for mobile Symbol or Intermec devices, which allows users to scan and update inventory in the field or warehouse and then synch the data with a PC. Business owners can be assured that they get a complete solution: inventory software, a scanning device and a barcode printer from one source that works together.

Keywords: WMS, mobile scanning device, labeling, picking, multiple warehouse locations, inventory audits, cycle count, label, mobile licenses, windows for mobile, SQL server, quantity on hand, backorders, symbol, Intermec

If you don’t have it or can’t find it, you can’t ship it. And nothing can drive customers away faster than not having what they want, when they want it. Traditionally, companies would prevent out-of-stock situations by ordering additional safety stock. But that increases inventory costs and can lead to a glut of unsold inventory.

Naxtor Technoogies offers a better solution with its Warehouse Management System (WMS) software. Providing real-time inventory control, WMS tracks items from receipt through storage, picking, and shipping, preventing lost inventory and out-of-stock conditions.

“With real-time inventory control, you always know what you have and where you have it,” said John product manager Easyway. “You can eliminate excessive overstock, reducing inventory levels and their related costs by 15 to 20%. “What’s more, because workers don’t have to search for items, you can reduce order pick cycle times by 50 to 100%.”

To prevent out-of-stock conditions, WMS directs automated replenishment of items when inventory drops below a predetermined level. Workers can manually restock the pick face or automated material handling systems can deliver replenishment stock to the pick face.

WMS provides real-time information on item levels, order status, and operator activity.

Cycle count processes ensure accurate inventory records, reducing or eliminating the need for physical inventories. Counts can be ordered for a specific item, by item and lot, or for all items in a specified range of locations.

Keywords: Out of stock, inventory cycle counting, wms, replenishment, inventory-record-lot-locations, picking, shipping.

With over 10 year’s experience, Naxtor Technologies continues to expand its caliber of warehouse systems. A pattern is emerging suggesting customers are requiring the full suite of warehouse systems encompassing; stock inventory management, stock inventory management as a total solution.Among numerous functions, the warehouse system caters for all stock movements into, within and out of warehouse, pick and pack operations which can also incorporate EDI functionality. The final step in this warehouse system process is dispatch where data is sent to create carrier consignment notes and/or consignment labels and data files for delivery of orders.
Using handheld mobile computers with barcode capture, full automation can be achieved with all warehouse activities and tasks communicating directly with ERP host systems. Naxtor warehouse system is capable of importing files from host system or connecting directly to extract data from host database.

The warehouse systems developed by Naxtor Technologies replace the arduous and error prone paper based methods, eliminating the paper trail and improving operations and warehouse accuracy. Wireless and manual desktop processing of information is possible depending on requirements of customers or in some cases it may be a combination of both.

A growing number of Naxtor Technologies clients are requiring warehouse systems to be capable of operating at various sites worldwide. With Naxtor Technologies warehouse management systems companies are able to use a single database and central server to access warehouses around the globe.

Keywords: Warehouse management system (WMS), stock inventory management, pick and pack, consignment labels, handheld mobile computers, barcode, ERP, paper trail, paperless, ODBC connectivity host systems, sites, server.

Warehouses are built around numbers—from the facility’s square footage, to how many rows of racking it takes to stock the number of stock-keeping units (SKUs), all the way to the amount of orders processed through a facility in a day. This article takes the numbers associated with warehouse management systems (WMS) you don’t see in the marketing brochures or advertisements of WMS vendors, and gets you thinking before you purchase and begin to implement a WMS.

If you watch television, you may be familiar with the CBS show NUMB3RS . Rob Morrow stars as an FBI detective aided by his mathematician brother in solving bank robberies and homicides. The show depicts how the confluences of FBI work, and mathematics provide unexpected revelations and answers to the most perplexing criminal questions. Let’s take a look at those number junctions in your distribution center.

30 Percent

Less than 30 percent of warehouses are efficient, according to “Benchmarking Warehouse Performance,” a study by the Georgia Institute of Technology ( Atlanta , Georgia [ US ]). That probably speaks directly to why you’re reading this article. You may have been wondering if a WMS system could make your warehouse more efficient.

Interestingly, about 30 percent of the 600,000 warehouses in the US have a WMS system installed. As the guy on the television show says, “Hmm” What are the numbers telling us? Only 30 percent of warehouses are efficient, and 30 percent of warehouses have a WMS system installed. Do you see a correlation?

Those numbers are telling me there are “crimes” taking place in 70 percent of warehouses. Although these crimes aren’t bank robberies or homicides, they do involve money lost and people getting hurt. My point is this: There’s a lot of information out there on how to make your warehouse more efficient, but what you need to realize is “it’s not what you know that counts, it’s what you do with what you know.” Many of you already know your warehouse is inefficient, and you’re not doing anything about it.

Assuming you are part of the 70 percent which process orders through an inefficient warehouse and that you are also part of the 70 percent that have not installed a WMS system, let’s look at possible reasons you’ve given for not implementing a WMS.

• Your warehouse is not big enough.
• You don’t have enough people or orders to justify such a large investment.
• Your information technology (IT) staff isn’t large enough.
• You are currently searching for a system. (Perhaps you’ve been researching WMS systems for years by attending trade shows, reading industry articles, and talking with vendors, but you still haven’t made a decision and purchased one.)

The reasons are endless, but your real reason is very likely a result of the next two numbers.

$100,000 to $500,000

A company will typically invest between $100,000 and $500,000 for software alone, but that software investment represents only a fraction of the overall costs. By the time hardware, training, implementation, revamping the warehouse, and consultants fees are added, that number can reach over $1 million faster than you can say multiplication. Those intangibles will usually reach one to three times the cost of the software. About 60 percent of the overall cost will be tied up trying to integrate the WMS system to the existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

The main reason only 30 percent of all warehouses have a WMS is because only 30 percent have been willing to bite the bullet and make the investment. There are other contributing factors, though.

220

More than 220 WMS vendors exist. How can anyone make an informed decision and select the correct business partner with so many options? Most companies don’t even try; they enlist consultants with an expertise in WMS to help them make that decision. The ones that don’t employ a consultant usually make their decisions based on cost, and then bring in a consultant to help dig them out.

Believe it or not, consultants provide an unbiased evaluation of your processes and potential vendors. They have no emotional ties to the current way you process your transactions. Many companies that automate their inefficient processes and procedures on their own end up doing do things wrong faster!

Trying to transform your warehouse into an efficient distribution center is really something you do not want to do alone. Think about your warehouse for a second. Your warehouse provides the fuel your organization needs to run. You may complain about high gas prices for your car, but the fuel that runs your distribution center or your supply chain is so costly that its value ranges between 6 percent and 20 percent of your organization’s annual revenue. In lay terms, a $100 million organization will have somewhere between $6 million and $20 million of fuel in its warehouses.

Think about the type of fuel your organization and supply chain runs on: inventory! Other than your people, nothing is more valuable to your company’s success. Let’s look at the real value of that inventory fuel. Let’s assume your organization makes four cents on every dollar, which means that for every $100 of lost inventory, the company must generate $2,500 in new sales to replace that $100 of lost inventory. Think about the effort your highest-paid people must exert to generate $2,500 worth of sales. It’s no secret that the highest-paid people within your organization are salespeople. Think about why they are the highest-paid in the company—it’s mainly because it takes a minimum of five visits to make a sale, and it costs three times as much to get a customer back as it does to keep an existing customer.

As an operations person, you may think salespeople are worthless and cause you all kinds of headaches, but in actuality, nothing happens until somebody sells something. And salespeople cannot efficiently or effectively perform their jobs if they do not know what’s in inventory. That’s why it’s crucial to involve a consultant to help select a system based on your current needs and your future requirements. The next three number regarding WMS systems are pretty startling, too.

30, 42, and 56

More than 30 percent of all WMS implementations fail. Only 42 percent are implemented within budget. And 56 percent of the implementations are delayed.

When you add the fact that it takes nine to twelve months to implement, and twenty-four to thirty-six months to realize a return on your investment, you begin to wonder if a WMS system is really worth it.

When you work the numbers, on a potential $1 million investment, you won’t see that money back for at minimum three years—and that is if everything goes perfectly. If everything goes as planned, your return on investment (ROI) could take four years or longer. By then, your business model might have changed so much that it will be time to invest in the next new thing, if your organization is still around.

You may be wondering where that last statement came from. A WMS is the one piece of technology that can shut your business down if not implemented correctly. Why? Because most organizations make dumb decisions. Why do they make dumb decisions? Because without the assistance of an outsider, “you don’t know what you don’t know!”

Another example of a bad decision that most senior executives make when investing in a WMS system is to implement it at their corporate location’s distribution center first.

Typically located at the company’s headquarters, executives often want to implement where they can see the progress. And because the headquarters’ warehouse is usually the largest, executives think a return will be realized much faster, because of the volume. But when satellite locations are dependent on that corporate location, what happens when the hub has the sniffles? It becomes the flu at the locations’ downstream.

Look at FoxMeyer , WebVan , Adidas , Nike , Builders Plumbing Supply , Toys “R” Us , and many others. Three of those companies are no longer around, two saw their stock price plummet as much as 20 percent, and one gave up and turned its fulfillment process over to a third party logistics provider. All because of a WMS system.

Some of you are probably wondering what the value of a WMS system is. The following numbers show the justification!

300 versus 1

Your data-entry personnel produce 1 error for every 300 keystrokes. With radio frequency (RF) scanning of bar codes, that number reduces to one error for every three million scans. Think about the accuracy of your inventory. Now think about your receiving department. How many keystrokes do they make a day?

50 percent

System-directed picks and put-aways will reduce the travel time of your forklifts by as much as 50 percent. Your put-away people spend at least an hour a day searching for put-away locations. That hour will be eliminated immediately. Picking accounts for 55 percent of your warehouse labor dollars. And 50 percent of the picking process consists of traveling to and from the locations.

35 percent

You can expect to receive as much as a 35 percent reduction in your operating expenses.

27 percent

The cost of carrying inventory is usually about 27 percent less in an automated environment.

20 percent

Inventory accuracy increases around 20 percent with a WMS system.

5 percent

Shipment accuracy improves around 5 percent.

Zero

After the system is implemented, you’ll have zero inventories to perform. However, anyone that says you can go live without a physical inventory count is nuts, and you should take an additional wall-to-wall physical inventory six to eight months after implementation. By then, the learning curve will be over, and everyone will understand the value of maintaining an accurate inventory. From that point forward, physical inventories won’t be necessary.

A look at those numbers should be enough to get you off of your hands and begin to seriously investigate a WMS system, but I know many of you will continue to gather data and take it back to your manager, vice president, president, and so on, only to have them again shoot down the idea of investing in a WMS system. Tell them a WMS system will also

• lower the total cost per unit shipped;
• reduce the number of inventory out-of-stocks;
• improve delivery accuracy and timeliness;
• increase profitability per order and per customer;
• reduce customer service cost;
• reduce phone communication costs; and
• increase sales.

Now is the time to take a serious look at your operation. With the continued strengthening of the economy comes more orders. With more orders comes more receiving, more inventory, and more people—and more inventory adjustments because of inadequately trained people and inefficient processes ultimately mean more returns and less money added to your bottom line.

Bottom Line

I don’t want you to think this is a doom-and-gloom article, but I want to make sure you get not only the good news about this technology, but also the truth. Many WMS vendors want you to believe that your company will experience WMS benefits relatively quickly after going live. In reality, at best it will take two years. Benefits can be experienced faster with a smaller system in a smaller location. Rolling out a WMS at a branch offers the opportunity to evaluate which processes need to be completely revamped, and what type of training will be required to ensure success. Most importantly, it prevents any and all disruptions of customers’ shipments.

Protecting your customers should be your top priority when purchasing and installing a WMS system. Today’s most serious business challenge is not selecting and implementing new technologies, raising capital, or hiring the right people. Today’s most serious business challenge is a scarcity of customers. The key to your organization’s success lies in knowing how to handle scarcity no matter when or where it appears.

In today’s environment, your customers have too many supplier options and too little money. Your customers won’t continue to patronize an organization that cannot send them what they want when they want it at a competitive price. You cannot do that efficiently without a WMS system properly installed. You already know having a lot of customers does not guarantee success when other key performance indicators (KPIs) suffer. You must energize your operation with the one tool that was designed to do just that: a warehouse management system.

About the Author

Rene Jones is the founder of Total Logistics Solutions Inc. ( www.logisticsociety.com ), a warehouse efficiency consulting company headquartered in Burbank , California ( US ). He is also the author of several books, including WMS 101 ( Selecting, Implementing and Maintaining a Warehouse Management System ).

Inventory inaccuracy is a nightmare for any warehouse. If left unchecked, inventory inaccuracy can lead to a negative feedback cycle of declining productivity and increasing inaccuracies. A downward spiral where warehouse productivity declines and feeds even more inaccuracies in the system. Left to itself, inventory inaccuracy erodes profitability and warehouse efficiency in a big way:

a. Poor customer service when a wrong product is shipped to a customer or a wrong delivery date is promised

b. Increase in Backorders because ATP system thinks there is plenty of stock

c. Lost productivity when operators run around looking for missing products

d. High product obsolescence when the missing products are “found” but too late to be of any use

e. Direct hit to profitability when there is an inventory write off

f. High inventory levels because you need the extra safety stock to hide the inaccuracies

g. Inefficient warehouse usage when you need to stop warehouse operations to carry a physical count in order to satisfy auditing requirements

Here are some steps that you can take in Naxtor WMS to improve accuracy:

1. Use RF devices to transact on the spot. This is the easiest way to improve inventory accuracy. When transactions are recorded on the spot in real time, there is less chance of error. This means going paperless and using task management in WMS to convey pick instructions to operators.

2. Train Warehouse Personnel to follow documented procedures when exceptions occur in the warehouse. The warehouse workers should be familiar with the procedure when an exception occurs e.g. if a product is not found as suggested by the system or damaged, the operator should know how to log exception and follow the steps.

3. Find and fix root cause when exceptions occur in the warehouse. Task execution using RF is a great way to record exceptions in real time as they occur. Analyze exception data in warehouse control board to see where and why exceptions are occurring? Are more exceptions being recorded for certain items or certain employees? Why? If a shipment of wrong product was detected, where did that pick come from and was the inventory corrected for the original item? Was wrong putaway the cause for a pick exception?

4. Storage Policy of items in your warehouse also impacts accuracy. To avoid picking the wrong items, make sure that items similar in appearance are stored apart from each other. Commingling items in the same locator is also a recipe for shipping inaccuracy. You also need to make sure that locators properly marked and physically distinguishable. When slotting items in the locator make sure that the locator corresponds to the item velocity and has enough space to store the maximum quantity of item specified. If a locator stock is overflowing into warehouse aisle, its usually not a good sign. If you have negative inventory allowed flag enabled in your warehouse, you need to question really hard as to why is it needed?

5. A counting policy is a must for every warehouse. Cycle counting a great way to gradually improve inventory accuracy. While eliminating yearly physical count is a noble goal, it can only be achieved when the warehouse has reached a certain threshold of accuracy level.

6. Bar codes or RFID are great auto-ID technologies to improve accuracy. Barcodes have an error rate that is significantly lower than human data entry. Additionally DFI feature in WMS can further improve accurate data entry.

7. Checks in warehouse processes to ensure accuracy. Example of such checks could be an additional packing step to scan items prior to putaway or shipment, a weighing scale linked to a divertor to weigh and compare standard and actual weight of LPNs bound for storage or staging, etc.

8. Check Digits is another way to improve data entry accuracy. When you dispatch an operator to a suggested locator how do you make sure that the picks are coming from the suggested locator and not from any warehouse locator? Locator check digit is a great way of ensuring that operators perform picks and putaway at the same physical locator as the data entered in WMS.

By Bridget McCrea, Contributing Editor — Logistics Management

The worldwide market for WMS is expected to grow at a 4.8 percent clip over the next five years, according to the latest research from ARC Advisory Group. The market hit $1.08 billion in 2006 and is forecasted to be over $1.36 billion in 2011. A mature market, according to ARC’s Steve Banker, service director for supply chain management, the WMS sector is headed for faster growth in the coming years than it has in years past. Credit the fact that the average WMS solution has a lifespan of 11 years, and the fact the market posted significant growth from 1995-2000, with driving future demand for the software solution. Ian Hobkirk, senior analyst for warehousing and transportation for The Aberdeen Group in Boston , calls WMS a relatively mature market, with only about 14 percent of companies lacking such a solution. “Everyone else has something in place, or some level of warehouse automation,” says Hobkirk, who contrasts that with the TMS sector, where roughly half of the companies have no such technology in place.

Now, Hobkirk says many of the early adopters are looking to upgrade and/or replace their WMSs with today’s more technologically advanced, scalable solutions. Expect that trend to serve as the fuel that drives growth in the overall WMS market. “What companies are struggling with is whether they have a WMS that can grow with them,” says Hobkirk, “and that’s flexible enough to allow them to rapidly change business processes.”

Today’s WMS vendors are offering a broader suite of functionalities to better tie warehouse operations into the overall supply chain without huge expense and effort. But are you really ready for an upgrade?

By Bridget McCrea, Contributing Editor — Logistics Management, 7/1/2007

With an average lifespan of 11 years, many existing Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) are coming up for review right now—and many aren’t passing muster.

“As the years between 1995 and 2000 were high growth years for the WMS market, the current market will mirror—on a smaller scale—the previous era’s growth,” says Steve Banker, service director for supply chain management at ARC Advisory Group in Dedham , Mass. As shippers demand improved functionality from their WMS, Baker says it will be “like Baby Boomers having kids, and creating a smaller, mirrored baby boom.”

According to Banker, the worldwide market for WMS is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8 percent over the next five years, moving it from a $1.0 billion market in 2006 to $1.4 billion in 2011. Creating much of that growth will be shippers’ need for upgrades to existing systems, as indicated by a recent Logistics Management study that found that 60 percent of responding companies are planning to upgrade or implement new software packages over the next 12 months.

Banker points to WMS advancements as the key driver to market growth. Where in the past, systems used radio frequency (RF) terminals to track product as it moved through the warehouse, today the focus is on voice recognition, a feature that’s included in most software packages. (See “Voices in the warehouse,” page 57.) Coming around the next corner is RFID, which is slowly, but surely, gaining acceptance as the best technology to feed real-time warehouse data to the WMS.

“There’s also been an emergence of multi-modal hardware applications, where RF scanning and voice, for example, are used in combination,” says Banker, who points out that RFID readers are also being integrated into forklifts, and new multi-modal applications involving RFID and voice are being explored. “By combining voice, RF and RFID in new ways, warehouse tasks can become quicker to perform, resulting in better data reliability.”

But while dreams of perfectly integrated technologies are inspiring many logistics managers to explore an upgrade, it’s certainly not as simple as cutting a check. At Eden Prairie, Minn.-based HighJump Software , Chad Collins, vice president of global strategy, says he’s seeing many shippers implementing their second or third WMS packages. Unfortunately, many of those companies are hitting resistance when trying to upgrade, namely because the systems put in place 10 or more years ago don’t always have a clear upgrade path.

“The architecture of the product doesn’t allow them to be upgraded easily,” says Collins. “For many, the cost of an upgrade is almost as costly as a new implementation.” Many times the problem lies in the hardware (such as the server) and the databases, he adds, which may no longer be supported by the software and/or hardware vendors.

“In the IT industry, these are referred to as ‘burning platforms,’” says Collins, “or aging technology platforms that need to be replaced not necessarily for a clear business need, but from an IT total cost of ownership need.” Before taking the leap, shippers should not only have a firm understanding of the allowances their current platform provides, but better know what’s available and what new functionalities make the most sense for their specific operations.

It’s all about SOA

While there’s a need for improved warehouse management tracking and controls, there’s always one or more software vendors ready and willing to tweak its offerings to meet those demands. Combine those demands with rapid advancements in technology, and you get the perfect recipe for “new and improved” WMS software packages.

Today’s systems are actually more generic than their forefathers, says Greg Aimi, director of supply chain research at AMR Research in Boston, who, like Collins, points out that many systems installed in the 1990s were highly customized to meet the needs of their users (be it by warehouse layout, practice fees, or other configurations). Newer systems (from 2000 and later) are based on service-oriented architecture (SOA), which includes more Web-based services and allows customizations to be relegated to “separate areas” from the vendor’s code.

“When a new version is released, it can be implemented without having to intertwine with the customizations, which aren’t so entwined with the code,” says Aimi, who predicts that by 2010 WMS systems will no longer be using the antiquated customization process, and will instead revolve around SOA. “This allows companies to upgrade without huge expense, effort and pain,” he adds.

Vendors are also looking outside of the warehouse walls and encompassing more of the supply chain under their umbrellas, says Collins. “Modern warehouse systems offer modules that really extend into the distribution channel,” says Collins, who advises shippers to seek out WMS vendors who share this philosophy.

Banker says shippers should also look at who is handling the integration: your company, the vendor or a third party. Look at the architecture of the original system, he says, as those that are functionally-rich and more than six or seven years old could require two months worth of work to get up and running. “For those, you will need substantial help from the vendor,” says Banker. “But if it’s a more modern architecture, your staff could probably complete the process over a weekend.”

Integration consideration

Whether your staff can handle the project depends on its level of IT competency, level of WMS customization required, and any contractual agreements, says Aimi. “Most of the time the contract for licensing the software doesn’t permit getting into the actual software of the product,” Aimi points out. “If you’re not permitted to work with the software in its raw code form, then you’re bound to be using the vendor to make those customizations.”

Also consider whether the WMS needs to integrate with an existing ERP system from a company like SAP or Oracle, says Aimi, who adds that small ERP players are getting up to speed with shippers’ needs in that regard. “Most companies should consider leveraging the vendor’s professional services staff for any customizations and changes that need to be made to the ERP system,” says Aimi.

Debugging is yet another issue that shippers should consider, particularly since no software implementation is ever complete on the day it rolls out. Aimi says vendors are typically good about getting any major bugs worked out quickly, but adds that most use a classification scheme designed to set priority levels for such fixes.

“If a customer reports a bug, they analyze it and assign it a priority,” says Aimi. “If that priority is low, then the likelihood that it will be fixed anytime soon is pretty low and may be a candidate to get fixed in the next major release.”

A bright side of any WMS upgrade is that the user learning curve tends to be substantially lower than the original installation, says Banker. “The first time you put in a WMS productivity goes down for a while before going back up,” he says. “Once a shipper has had a system in place, the only learning curves concern any new modules being introduced.”

Think out of the box

As with any piece of technology, WMS vendors are continuously honing their products to meet client needs. Going forward, Banker says more of them will move away from RF and instead incorporate the use of voice controls with RFID as a way to create even faster, more efficient systems.

“We’re already seeing some of this in the field,” says Banker, who sees the movement as a possible challenge for shippers with older WMS systems. “For some, it will take substantial re-architecture to support this. For others, it will be easy.”

Collins expects WMS providers to offer a broader suite of products in the coming months, as a way to help shippers tie more of the overall supply chain into their warehouse operations.

“When you do a WMS upgrade it’s not just about the four walls of the distribution center anymore. It’s really about pulling in additional pieces to a complete supply chain execution solution,” says Collins. “That’s something that wasn’t available when shippers first implemented WMS systems.”

Tales from the trenches: Buyers Products

WMS upgrades have become a biennial event for Buyers Products Company of Mentor , Ohio . Buyers’ IT Manager Pamela Davey says the manufacturer and distributor of truck parts braces itself for the process every 24 months for new functionalities and capabilities that its WMS provider, Manhattan, has to offer for its ILS.net system.

With a 180,000-square-foot warehouse that is “somewhat automated,” according to Davey, the company uses two pick towers and conveyors to move its tool boxes, salt spreaders, hitches, and hydraulics out the door to retailers like Northern Tool, Wal-Mart, and Tractor Supply, as well as individual installers.

Installed since 2002, the company’s WMS has been upgraded twice since original implementation. The process generally takes about three months, and another upgrade is scheduled for late-2007, says Davey, who says she particularly likes the way the vendor continues to roll more functionality into its core system—thus reducing the need for so many customizations. On the last round, for example, Davey says the system included a beefed-up replenishment module that allowed Buyers Products to “get a lot more benefit from automated replenishment.”

Davey says she’s looking forward to the next upgrade, and that she’s particularly interested in reaping the benefits of an improved cross-docking function. “The current version has very limited cross-docking capabilities,” says Davey, whose WMS wish list includes improved vendor compliance to handle special projects, such as the large national catalogue firm that needs special labels applied to every box that runs on its conveyor system. “We spend an awful lot of time writing up custom labels and developing custom procedures, and could use help in that area,” she adds.

To shippers looking to upgrade their WMSs in the near future, Davey’s most important piece of advice is to be realistic with timelines. Her firm’s pending upgrade, for example, will likely start being planned out in December, and roll out in March. Executive buy-in for the process is equally as important, says Davey, who advises logistics managers to quantify the benefits clearly before approaching upper management with the idea.

“Figure out why you’re upgrading and measure it, or else the boss will see it as a waste of time and money,” says Davey. “Once approved, factor in the time necessary to do sufficient testing and training because it’s not seamless.”

Tales from the trenches: Smith Dairy

It’s been about a year since Oroville, Ohio-based Smith Dairy upgraded the WMS system in its 60,000-square-foot main warehouse. As a matter of fact, the upgrade was so successful that the dairy product manufacturer is rolling out the new-and-improved system at its Richmond , Ind. , location.

Rewind back a few years and you’ll see that Smith Dairy was using a WMS developed by one of its equipment vendors. The system was highly customized and difficult to upgrade in a seamless fashion. “We wanted product to flow around the building without someone having to touch it,” recalls Dean Reed, director of IT, who spoke with several WMS vendors before going with a HighJump solution in 2004.

The move from a proprietary system to the more sophisticated WMS wasn’t easy, says Reed, who started the process in the fall of 2004 and saw it wrap up in the spring of 2005. “It wasn’t very pleasant,” says Reed, whose firm used a systems integrator to handle the switch. One particularly challenging point involved the operational parameters for an unmanned crane. “The integrator took too many liberties when it wrote that application,” says Reed, “and buried us for two weeks because the crane was so inefficient because their code was inefficient.”

Smith Dairy has since streamlined its WMS and subsequent upgrades, which take just a few days for the firm’s warehouse software manager to complete. Its most recent installation included a voice picking system and a new, Web-based interface that Reed says has a “nice, user-friendly menu that slides off the edge of the screen, allowing users to see more of the data.”

Reed says shippers that are considering a WMS upgrade should take a step back and consider what they want to get out of the changeover, how long it will take and what customizations will be required. “Be perfectly clear with what you expect the system to do,” says Reed, “and if you’re using an integrator, don’t give the company any wiggle room to take the easy route or you’ll wind up getting burned when you try to implement.”

Even if you are an information systems manager and think you’ve scrutinised the best range of warehouse management systems (WMS), leaving no stone unturned - there is still more to unfold.

How do you know what’s best for your organisation? How do you choose? This article will give you some practical tips and provoke your thoughts in this direction.

As WMS solutions continue to pour into the market, users struggle to differentiate one system from another — and vendors fight to break away from the competition.

Because all WMS products serve essentially the same function, helping businesses manage moving and storing items within a warehouse, vendors are striving to land new customers by providing added functionality and offering compatibility with other types of business software.

Warehouse and transportation management are two different concerns. Not so, think again… While many business managers view warehouse and transportation management as separate concerns, the two are closely entwined.

After all, it’s hard to manage warehouse inventory if you don’t have insight to the stream of items coming in and going out of your facility.

This is why a growing number of warehouse management system vendors are adding transportation management capabilities to their products, either in the form of add-on transportation management modules or built-in links to external transportation management system (TMS) products.

SAP, Oracle, Manhattan Associates, and Sterling Commerce, for example, have combined warehouse and transportation management functions together. However, these solutions do have a limited set of integrated functionality.

WMS/TMS integration aims to provide seamless logistics visibility. This capability allows users to reallocate inventory on the fly and meet customer needs without unnecessary disruption or additional costs generated by the need to reroute or reship items.

Warehouse management systems and transportation management integration can improve delivery time for customers as well as achieve as well as additional cost-out opportunities from aggregating and consolidating shipments from a single facility.

The Choice is Yours

The trend toward deeper functionality and wider interoperability has led to more warehouse management system choices than ever before. Yet it has also created a much steeper learning curve for customers.

Every vendor has its strengths, but every vendor also presents a fairly compelling set of challenges. WMS users making this decision face an extremely complicated process.

The ever-expanding array of WMS products, offering varied features and capabilities, has made pre-purchase research increasingly important. Putting in quality time to understand your business and what you want to get out of a WMS is one of the most vital investments a company can make.

More information?

New World Business Solutions specialises in the engineering of elegant, high-performance logistics and supply chain solutions. As dedicated supply chain consultants we combine the practical skill, analytical expertise and cutting edge technology to deliver operational simplicity with quick returns.

By Katrina C. Arabe

Maintaining a competitive edge in today’s marketplace requires a lean and mean supply chain. With the recent proliferation of software solutions, find out which one is the best for you.

Despite the tightening of technology spending, AMR Research estimates that companies will spend about $7.8 billion this year buying and installing supply chain management software. The anticipated boom in spending can be attributed to a surge in interest in Internet-enabled supply chain technology. The reasons are evident: to cut back on inventory, improve forecasting, and reach new heights of customer service. By working more efficiently with suppliers, companies can streamline their supply chains, thereby getting products on the market quicker. This sort of speed and efficiency is paramount if a company is to remain competitive. In the words of Warren Hausman, Professor of Industrial and Engineering Management at Stanford University , “Competition is not really company vs. company but supply chain vs. supply chain.”

In the past decade, US companies have been focused on developing core operations, and have outsourced their peripheral operations in an effort to reduce the lead-time in communicating with suppliers. The necessary buyer-supplier transactions, such as ordering, were usually conducted through the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Then came the Internet and its promise of simultaneous communication with multiple suppliers. In its wake, a host of software firms have appeared, each offering its own solution to managing supply chains via the Internet.

The objective of supply chain management software has always been to show, in real time, the operational data of every area in the supply network; including partner’s sales information, warehouse inventory, production plans, and shipment schedules. From this information, reliable forecasts can be calculated to schedule production. Among the benefits realized by those who have successfully incorporated this management software is the ability to cut back on inventory by as much as 60% per year.

Of course, there are many points along the supply chain and, though many software firms position themselves as an end-to-end solution, the fact is that companies will most likely have to combine software from a number of vendors to achieve a fully automated supply chain. Supply chain management software can be said to fall into one of five general categories, each with its dominant vendors. These categories are:

• Customer demand analysis

• Purchasing supplies

• Factory scheduling

• Order tracking

• Market research/ Product design

With every possible angle of supply chain management covered, what would keep a company from rushing to install a vendor’s software? In a nutshell, installing quality supply chain management software is expensive and comes with a number of pitfalls, chief of which is negotiating the possible lack of connectivity between the software solution and the company’s legacy systems.

In making the transition to fully e-commerce-enabled supply chain management, companies would do well to keep in mind one golden rule. In the words of AMR Research Analyst, Kevin O’Marah, “Baby steps work, big bangs don’t.” Installing supply chain software is a cautious procedure and should be carried out incrementally. Companies installing management software should do so cautiously, thoroughly testing each section before moving on to the other. Consultants in this field have generally advised that each component of a supply chain management system be installed and allowed to run for six to nine months before moving on to the next step of installation. It has been predicted by analysts, such as Karen Peterson of the Gartner Group, that a mad scramble to install supply chain management software could result in lost profits or a public relations disaster for 1 out of every 20 companies that attempt to do so. Companies can avoid being one of these tragic statistics by taking the time to test their software’s usability each and every step of the way.

Source: The Missing Link

Ian Mount and Brian Caulfield

eCompany, May 2001

By Katrina C. Arabe

How do you handle nearly 3 billion lbs. of merchandise a year with speed and accuracy? For Sears, the answer is a wireless mobile system that tracks product movement in real time.

Upgrading the communications system of your material handling operation can pay big dividends. This is what Sears Logistics Services Inc. discovered after implementing a new wireless mobile system in its seven retail replenishment centers (RRCs). The new technology’s impact was quickly evident, boosting productivity by more than 30% and paying for itself within eight months. In addition, it dramatically cut overtime, virtually wiped out system errors and forestalled more than 90% of support calls.

The new system, installed in fall 2001, delivered the kind of performance that Sears Logistics, a subsidiary of Sears Roebuck & Co., demanded. Its seven RRCs provide all the merchandise to the 870 Sears shopping mall stores across the country. Volume is very high. Last year, these RRCs supplied 2.7 billion lbs. of merchandise to stores. Each day, these facilities process more than 25,000 pallets. Furthermore, merchandise is constantly flowing in and out, staying in storage for only 24 or 48 hours on average. “The new system was a bigger benefit that we thought it was going to be,” says Bryan Howell, a hardware specialist at Sears Logistics’ biggest distribution center, located in Pennsylvania .

The MobileBuilder 2.1 system from California-based PenRight Corp. replaced another wireless mobile system, which Sears had installed in the mid-90s. That older technology, in turn, had taken the place of a manual paper-based system. While the old wireless system had improved the management of deliveries, shipments and inventories, it wasn’t delivering enough speed and accuracy. “The old system was based on a DOS system, the new system is Windows CE-based,” says Winston Yuan, an internal consultant who selected and adapted the applications to the RRCs. “The DOS system was slower, less reliable and it was very difficult to connect to the host. With the new system the network connection is much more efficient, provides more memory, more hard drive space and it’s faster.”

Besides superior network connection, Yuan chose the MobileBuilder system because it didn’t need multiple scanning devices. It runs on a Pocket PC made by New York-based Symbol Technologies. This mobile device can utilize different scanning libraries. Instead of having to use four different scanning devices like it did in the past, Sears could rely on one handheld. This mobile device scans merchandise on its way into the distribution center to confirm receipt and on its way out of the distribution center to record that it has been shipped to fill an order. In this manner, product is tracked in real time—giving valuable information to everyone involved. Retail replenishment managers, who restock stores, can quickly find out what merchandise is available at the RRC. Also, store managers can access this data to learn what products are coming into the store and in what amounts.

By providing information in real time, the system has drastically reduced error. “The old system didn’t give us real time information for available bins and locations in the warehouse,” says Howell. “With the Pocket PC we have the ability to go real time and it actually eliminates human error.” It prevents such mistakes as workers selecting the same bin location twice, an error that can disrupt the process. “Based on an 8-hour shift, the old system would run 30 to 40 errors a day,” says Howell. “An error would lock up the entire system and it would be a lot harder and a lot longer to reboot the system to get it up and running again. With the new system sometimes you won’t see an error for a couple of weeks. It’s a major difference.”

This error reduction has translated to increased productivity, greatly improving slotting applications—the process whereby warehouse workers called slotters receive pallets sent by manufacturers via truck and then store the merchandise in bins in the warehouse. “We’ve (almost) doubled the productivity of our slotters,” says Howell. “I would say that in our old system the average pallets moved per slotter would be around the 220 to 230 range. Now our range is between 300 to 400 pallets.” Even peak time volumes pose no problem for the new system. The RRCs don’t have to hire extra help anymore for the busiest seasons and have even cut down on overtime. “Before we installed the new system we saw people working overtime in order to complete a shipment,” says Yuan. “Now I can tell you that most employees are getting their shipments filled in their regular shifts.”

Even if the wireless connection between the handhelds and the server is lost, the process is not hampered. Employees can continue working because these mobile devices retain the information until the connection is restored, during which time workers can send the data to the server. Memory storage is dense—with the Pocket PCs, which are equipped with a wireless LAN radio, holding up to 64MB. In fact, this large memory makes continuous connection to the server unnecessary. By only periodically connecting to the server, these mobile devices are able to run faster and get even more mileage from their batteries.

With its MobileBuilder system bringing so much speed and reliability, what is the next step for Sears replenishment? Even greater accuracy. “For the future, my personal expectation is to have a voice interface with the device because that will create even better accuracy,” says Yuan. In a few years, employees may be commanding their mobile devices to “scan box” or “display order” with their voices.

Source: Replenishment Heaven

Peter Strozniak