Now one day, if we need something, say Glue stick, I go and search the store room boxes. I opened one box, it is not there .I opened another and another. I have forgotten that which box I have kept the glue stick. Pretty difficult situation.
This is the case even though the inventory is small. Imagine the situation of big companies where they have huge inventory and there is a need to manage it. “Warehouse Management” becomes a necessity in such scenarios. And “Warehouse Management systems” help the companies in managing their warehouse.
Let us first read the definitions of a Warehouse and a Warehouse Management System
A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They come equipped with loading docks to load and unload trucks; or sometimes are loaded directly from railways, airports, or seaports. They also often have cranes and forklifts for moving goods, which are usually placed on ISO standard pallets loaded into pallet racks.
A Warehouse Management System is a system which control the movement and storage of materials within a warehouse and process the associated transactions, including shipping, receiving, putaway and picking. The systems also direct and optimize stock putaway based on real-time information about the status of bin utilization.
The objective of a warehouse management system is to provide a set of computerised procedures to handle the receipt of stock and returns into a warehouse facility, model and manage the logical representation of the physical storage facilities (e.g. racking etc), manage the stock within the facility and enable a seamless link to order processing and logistics management in order to pick, pack and ship product out of the facility.
Example Warehouse
A typical warehouse should contain all the above mentioned area.
Goods are brought inside the warehouse via the Door Inbound and kept in the Staging area. Here the inbound materials are sorted and consolidated. It is then moved to Storage.
When the material is to be shipped, it is moved to Packing area, where it is packed and labeled as per the details. The ready-to-ship goods are kept in Outbound Staging area from where it is taken by the shipment trucks via Door Outbound.
Advantages of using Warehouse Management Systems
• WMS gives you the ability to optimize several types of inventory transactions – such as receiving and putaway, warehouse replenishment, inventory control and cycle counting, and picking and shipping.
• A WMS assists operational personnel to complete tasks for inventory movement into the facility, direct movement of inventory, and manage order fulfillment tasks in a much efficient manner.
• Use of WMS maximizes the use of warehouse space through effective picking methodologies, location consolidation and cross docking.
• It optimizes put-away and uses automated technology, such as barcode scanners and RFID, to efficiently monitor product flow
• It provides valuable visibility reports about the status of product in the warehouse
Conclusion
Warehouse Management continues to be the most important factor in the supply chain execution strategy of any wholesale distributor. With the advent of new technologies like RFID, the way in which distributors manage their high volume warehouses can be redefined. Research is going on to make the warehouse management as automated as possible.
Even Robots are tuned to such an extent that they can make all the inventory movements instead of workers in the warehouse
Enjoy this youtube video where you can see Warehouse Robots at work.
