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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

ERP and WMS Work Together to Create Warehouse Flow

Every company has some kind of inventory management system (whether automated or manual) that keeps track of what’s on hand and where it is stored. Usually, this function is an integral part of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that also addresses production, procurement and sales – the activities that bring inventory into and out of the warehouse.

How to manage what’s in the warehouse and the warehouse resources themselves are quite another matter. Warehouse space and staff can be a significant expense and companies want to make the most of what they have. Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) address these concerns and should be integrated with ERP and distribution management systems to avoid redundancy and eliminate extra work and errors that result from duplication across systems.

The most obvious functions of WMS are put-away and picking – informing the material handlers where to put things and where to pick from. Equally important, however, is to locate items where picking can be most efficient – fast-moving items closer to the packing and loading area, items often ordered together close to each other to minimize travel for the pickers, and similar logic.

WMS also hosts reporting systems that both update its own records and pass the inventory transactions to ERP and other systems that need to know about inventory status. The masses of detailed information within the WMS support extensive reporting and analysis and form the basis for the optimization logic that drives the put-away and picking recommendations. Built-in Business Intelligence can provide management with valuable insight into warehouse operations, use of resources, and ways to make the best use of the warehouse and its personnel.

To read more about what WMS and ERP can do for your distribution or manufacturing business, visit the Advanced Supply Chain blog.

The 2013 Brown Smith Wallace Distribution and Manufacturing Software Guides are currently available for download. The 2014 edition will be available in early-March, 2014. Please contact snelson@bswllc.com for more information.
You can also request these guides, as well as all other materials, via our website: http://www.software4distributors.com/vendor/resources_index.aspx


 
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