Warehouse management system

A warehouse management system (WMS) is a software application, designed to support warehouse or distribution center management and staff. They facilitate management in their daily planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling the utilization of available resources, to move and store materials into, within, and out of a warehouse, while supporting staff in the performance of material movement and storage in and around a warehouse.

Warehouse management solutions are primarily tactical tools, purchased and used by businesses to satisfy the unique customer demand requirements of their supply chain(s) and distribution channel(s), when the inventory and workload is larger than what can be handled manually, with spreadsheets. Motivation to purchase generally comes from need to support sales growth or improve performance, and occasionally both.

A WMS uses a database configured to support warehouse operations, containing detail describing a variety of standard warehouse elements including:

Daily management functions include

Warehouse management systems have the capability to partner with staff in performing the detail processes required to handle all of the major and many minor warehouse tasks of receiving, inspection and acceptance, put-away, internal replenishment to picking positions, picking, packing, order assembly on the shipping dock, documentation, and shipping (loading onto carrier vehicles); processes including directing and validating each step, capturing and recording all inventory movement and status changes to the data file.

An implemented WMS will be supported with a variety of communications technologies (radio frequency), automatic ID technologies (Bar code, RFID, etc.), mobile computers, and occasionally with automated material handling (conveyors and sortation) and storage equipment (carousels, automatic storage and retrieval, etc.), that may be processed within the WMS and sent to the business host computer in support of financial transactions, Advance Ship Notice to customers, purchasing and inventory management, etc.

Warehouse management systems can be standalone systems, or supply chain execution suite, modules of an ERP system such as Odoo, Megaventory, or Visual World. Depending on the size and sophistication of the organization, the system can be as simple as a handwritten list that are updated when required, spreadsheets using software such as Microsoft Excel or Access or purpose-built software programs.

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