WMS Pioneers

WMS Pioneers Episode 1: The Early Years of WMS

“Brothers from different mothers” as they describe it, Softeon CEO Jim Hoefflin and CTO Mark Fralick have worked together over the last 35 years. The duo, known at Softeon as “WMS Pioneers” developed one of the first Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) in 1993 after realizing there was a market shaping.
 
Lookout for new episodes on the last Tuesday of every month. Watch them all at https://www.softeon.com/wms-pioneers.

Improving Your Warehouse Management System Vocabulary

Getting WMS team members on the same page in terms of terminology is a key part of a successful Warehouse Management System project. The WMS Glossary of Terms can help, defining more than 90 terms and acronyms, as an on-line resource or downloadable pdf. Great handout for term members at start of a project. 

Understanding the Gartner WMS Critical Capabilities Report

Less well-known than the WMS Magic Quadrant, the Gartner Critical Capabilities report ranks WMS vendors purely on functionality across nine attributes, weighted by different levels of warehouse complexity. It is an important companion piece to the MQ to understand the WMS market, as we explain in this podcast.

Softeon’s Mark Fralick on a New Way to Think about Warehouse Execution Systems and Workload Balancing

In the second of our two podcasts featuring highlights of Mark Fralick’s interview with Bob Trebilcock of Modern Materials Handling magazine, Fralick suggests a new way to think about how Warehouse Execution Systems might orchestrate order fulfillment to balance work across the distribution center.

Interfacing versus Integration in Materials Handling Systems

Highlights from a recent Modern Materials Handling magazine podcast featuring editor Bob Trebilcock and Mark Fralick, Chief Technology Officer at Softeon. “Interfacing is easy. Integration is hard,” when it comes to warehouse automation, Fralick says. Trebilcock wants to know why.

Understanding Distributed Order Management Part 2

We conclude our look at this important but little understood type of supply chain software.

Understanding Distributed Order Management

Distributed Order Management or DOM is a powerful and unique tool to optimize order sourcing across an extended network. It is most well known in Omnichannel retail applications, but there are a number of use cases in B2B as well. Learn more in this informative podcast. 

A Look at Warehouse Management Systems in the Cloud

After a somewhat slow start, some lessons learned from dozens of Cloud WMS deployments.

Highlights from CSCMP’s State of Logistics Report 2023

Annual study finds US Logistics Costs as Percent of GDP soared to record level last year.
 

An Update on State Laws Regulating use of Labor Standards in Distribution

Washington latest to pass legislation, targeting Amazon but impacting many other companies.