The Logistics Insights podcast from Softeon addresses the key distribution topics of the day in just 3 mins - delivering a perspective on distribution management and technology you simply will not find anywhere else.
In may be a mature market space, but by all counts, the market for new Warehouse Management Systems remains strong.
There are in fact a wide number of potential factors that drive companies to look for a new WMS solution, which we have handily grouped into 10 different logistics scenarios, and in Part 1, we lay out the first five.
You might need a new WMS if...
Dynamic Slotting is a technique available in some Warehouse Management Systems in which a forward pick location is created dynamically, rather than being dedicated to a single SKU.
This capability is needed in two primary situations: The first is when there aren’t enough pick locations to handle all SKUs a DC carries. The second scenario is when demand for SKU in a wave or general order pool far exceeds the storage capacity of the forward pick location for that SKU.
Autonomous mobile robots are coming to a DC near you - likely your facility - and probably soon. A.M.R.’s have taken the distribution world by storm, driven by both operational efficiencies and the challenges with finding enough labor in most US markets.
This podcast dives into the benefits that can be achieved, the challenges, and the keys to making your investments future-proof.
Warehouse Management Systems are well-known, yet we still continue to find many companies that are new to WMS.
Even for managers with some WMS experience, we’ve found it useful to review the core benefits that a WMS delivers. Here they are...
Direct-to-Consumer (or DTC) strategies are very popular right now in retail and consumer goods companies and it’s easy to understand why - no company should be missing out on this megatrend with the numbers skyrocketing over the past year and COVID-19 pandemic.
Warehouse Management Systems – from some vendors at least – were a little late to move to the Cloud. Softeon has been doing Cloud WMS deployments for many years, but has really seen adoption take off in the past two year.
This is due to the major advantages from Cloud deployments in such areas as time and cost of the implementations and ease of system management post-go live, requiring little internal IT resources.
After a significant number of Cloud WMS deployments, Softeon has gained insights that are potentially of interest to prospective WMS adopters, which we’ll summarize in this broadcast.
Most WMS systems in the past did not concern themselves with utilization of materials handling equipment.
The result: big peaks and valleys in volume, resulting in lots of wait time and reducing total system throughput.
WES was developed to address that challenge, using algorithms to level-load cartons on to the equipment, and using techniques such as waveless order picking to meet that goal.
That capability can deliver real value and either increase throughput from an existing system, or reduce the size, floor space and cost of new equipment being planned.
But there has been little focus on WES for manual or only modestly automated facilities. Softeon is working to change that.
https://vurbl.com/station/4Hg29rMKQY0/
Why are put walls becoming so popular?
Order picking efficiencies are gained through use of batch picking, where picks are grouped so that all items needed for orders to be processed in a given wall module or modules are picked in one stop in the picking area. This is generally much more efficient than discrete order picking
An introduction to the increasingly popular use of Put Walls for order fulfillment.
Before the virus pandemic, labor challenges in distribution centers were almost at crisis levels.
The reality is there are many tools available to take on the DC labor challenge, whether your issue is labor costs, labor availability, DC throughput or like many all three.
