WMS Must-Haves: Adaptability, Scalability for Efficiency and Profit

Q: What do you consider to be the primary commercial advantages of a contemporary WMS?

A: The DNA of a WMS should be adaptable, fast, affordable, and scalable to offer a low entry point into the warehouse versus Tier 1 solutions, while at the same time providing a platform that expands exponentially according to the client's requirements.

Q: With a WMS you must be able to build fast and efficient ways to accommodate changes in client requirements or adapt to changing environments. What is your point of view?

A: A WMS must be designed to allow clients the "keys to the car" so to speak, where they can extend the functionality of their WMS without custom coding. Thus, clients can extend according to their requirements without time-consuming plans or make process modifications essentially on the fly.

The actual benefit of a WMS must be the rapid initial implementation and then in the case of 3PLs adding new clients is a fraction of the expected cost.

Modules as proprietary WCS tightly integrated with the WMS as well as an advanced module for interfacing have to be designed to work as universal connection tools to allow for integration into virtually any automation, ERP, or e-commerce shopping carts with little configuration by the client resources and not necessarily the WMS vendor's development team.

Q: What tools should a WMS own to gain insights on performance and activity?

A: Warehouse intelligence is of utmost importance providing analytics that actively monitor performance and activity through WMS related KPIs, visualizations, and measures.

It is essential to provide both historical and trending data to the management team, as well as dashboards on real-time productivity, activity, and work content to the floor. The mantra will be if we capture it in the system, the customer can manage and display in dashboard formats the progress and performance of the operation as it happens.

The true benefit of this real-time visibility is measured in the increase in performance of the operation by 20% per hour, as well as actively balancing the requirement of labor from a day-to-day basis.

Having the ability to know that on a given day, your performance in picking would be 50 lines per hour, and at 2:20 pm you have 1,150 lines left, you would require an additional 23 hours of picking or call in 10 people on picking.

You could then adjust your labor as required during the final 2.5 hours of the day or send home unnecessary labor to save money and time.

Mantis offers all the aforementioned, together with many more modules and systems to create the most appropriate logistics solution for your enterprise.