Warehouse management and efficiency is changing on a daily basis. How do suppliers keep up with the competition? One major area where many warehouses can improve their systems is through order picking productivity.
Whether it is small pick pack items or larger items that take up multiple pallet locations here are five excellent solutions to maximize warehouse order picking efficiency.
A good Warehouse Management System (WMS) can be the key to a business’ success or failure. In a recent study released by UPS avid online shoppers now make more than half their purchases with e-commerce. These days, customers want to shop online, on their smart phones and in stores. Consumers are skilled at finding deals. They want to get sales event alerts and receive coupons by email and text message.
Even well established companies like Wal-Mart are struggling to capture their portion of the market. Businesses need to respond to the changing needs of tech savvy customers while taking advantage of that same technology to streamline their business model.
So how do you pick a system that’s just right for your ecommerce, distribution or fulfillment warehouse?
In today’s data driven world knowing how your warehouse is performing and finding areas to improve efficiency and speed of delivery are like gold to management and customers. Regularly running reports in your warehouse management system is critical for diagnosing the health of your inventory and warehouse management processes. In this blog we will discuss 9 reports that can help you identify which products are raising your inventory holding costs, improve the use of your warehouse space and define best practices for your labor force.
Massive amounts of data can be correlated at the touch of a button in order to spot trends, discover inefficiencies, and speed up the entire process. Workforce management is made simple and can be customized by need. You can maximize relationships that increase your bottom line and eliminate time and resource waste.
How do you determine which reports are the most useful to run? Well, we have done the work for you and have compiled what we have seen as the 9 most telling reports that your warehouse manager should be running to improve your overall warehouse efficiency:
Technology is advancing and customers are expecting product ordered today to be at their doorstep yesterday. Real-Time visibility of what inventory you have available in the warehouse, what inventory you have on order to the warehouse and what your upcoming order demand looks like is a necessity in today’s world. It is unacceptable to a customer for a company to not know where inventory is within their warehouse or to be out of stock. Now you have an angry customer that might just take their business elsewhere and may never return.
If your company is utilizing a Warehouse Management System you are headed in the right direction. Using a WMS to track the ins and outs of clientele product is essential to running a business in today’s crazy world.
However, some of those businesses out there may be using outdated software, or perhaps their software is non-existent. It may seem implausible, but if a small startup business is relying on sticky notes and spiral notebooks, things are going to fall apart really quickly. You don’t want this mayhem to happen to you.
If your company is losing clients due to obsolete methods, it’s time to upgrade to a WMS that offers easy-to-learn software that offers real-time visibility, whether you’re on site or not. There are four areas an advanced WMS demonstrates the importance of real-time visibility to a company’s inventory data:
Whether you are a 3PL, distributor, fulfillment, eCommerce or retail focused warehouse a great Warehouse Management System will streamline and speed up the way you do business. Chances are if there is a warehouse they will be using some type of warehouse management software. If you are expanding your business, need to choose a WMS for your new venture or looking to upgrade your current system, it can be difficult to navigate all the different systems and decide what will work best for your organization. Below we will explore a few of the initial steps that a professional warehouse operator should take to get the most out of their new warehouse management system.
