Warehouse Management Software Systems

A major driver in Supply Chain Management for the past 20 years has been to reduce inventory at the same time as improving customer service. This has changed the role of the warehouse from simply being a place to store inventory to an activity zone that adds customer value. Use of Warehouse Management Software, RFID and Data Capture has been critical in helping to automate warehouse processes and disciplines to maximise efficiency.

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A typical Warehouse Management software system would encompass the following functions:

• Receiving items from external suppliers as well as internal production departments: identification, labelling, positioning and repositioning of goods that are received. All activities are typically stored in journals so that a complete history of items and their identifiers can always be recreated using an audit trail.
  
• Placement of items in the warehouse: dividing a warehouse into zones with different storage purposes or conditions eg. items requiring low temperature, division according to rate of turnover / priority and goods that are visible in the system even though not yet placed on the inventory.
  
• Picking of items prior to shipping: handling internal transfers as well as external shipments. Shipments can be defined as a collection of items to be packed in the same container, or to be shipped at the same time, including bills of materials in order to send items from the warehouse into production.
  
• Packing items for shipment or transfer: based on the shipment, the system creates a picking route, which takes into account different zones, heights, truck vs manual picking and direction through the warehouse etc. Also enabling "batch" picking which means taking servicing several orders in a single routing.

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On-line transaction processing using radio frequency (RF) barcode scanning terminals is becoming the standard for today's warehouse and shop floor procedures. The data capture terminals can be mounted on forklift trucks to monitior pallet movement or used as handheld units for on-foot transactions such as inventory or cycle counting.

To help maximize efficiency throughout the entire warehouse management cycle, Warehouse Management Software is typically linked with other enterprise applications or modules such as logistics, inventory management, production, sales orders and purchase orders.

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