Evaluating a WMS? Look for this features.
Among a wide variety of warehouse management software available in the market, many WMS features are standard. They include the following:
Highly Configurable Process
WMS makes it possible for companies to configure the processes, including advanced allocation, putaway and picking logic to ensure that the warehouse is optimized to pick faster, deliver more and with fewer mistakes.
Inventory Tracking
All activities in the WMS are tracked, including receiving, putaway, inventory adjustment, picking and shipping. All basic WMS will be able to work with Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) devices.
Robotic Automation
Some advanced WMS such as AC2's Wave WMS can seamlessly integrate with Autonomous Mobile Robot(AMR) or Automatic Guided Vehicle(AGV) robots to vastly increase operational productivity.
Light Systems
Advanced WMS enables warehouse operations to integrate their process flow using Light Systems such as pick-to-light and pick-from-light. These light devices are not new technologies, but they are still used in many warehouses.
Zoning
The feature to define zones in the warehouse is often only found in advanced WMS. The feature allows warehouse operations to define zone and group activities by zone. Zone operation can be unbelievable effective, especially for picking activities and robotics operations.
Wave/Waveless
The wave feature is normally found only in advanced WMS. Some even more advanced WMS is now providing operation with on-the-fly wave capability(Waveless), which means Wave no longer needs to be predefined or use templates. It is a very cool feature and will most certainly enable a faster warehouse operation in certain operations.
Label Generation
Whether it is pallet label, bill of landing(B/L), packing list, or manifest, WMS is able to generate and customize them.
Reporting
WMS is able to provide many useful reports to help warehouse operations in analysing the performance, including labour KPI, Inventory KPI, and many other KPI reports.
Read more on What is a Warehouse Management System: